Scatterer
by chickengun99
Summary: Six months after Salem's defeat, the world of Remnant has changed. The Grimm are weakening, and the Kingdoms have started to expand for the first time in decades. However, none of this matters to Ruby Rose, as she must learn to contend with an entirely different world.
1. Seed 1-1

**Seed 1.1**

Deep in the Emerald forest, Raven Branwen returned from a hunt. She was dressed in black and red; thigh-high boots, a short dress, a feathered sash hanging from one hip, and a silver mask covering her face, vaguely reminiscent of a fearsome bird of prey. She had heard the cries of a flock of Nevermore that had managed to survive through isolation, and left her tribe of bandits to fend for themselves while she went out to track them down.

Six months ago, she wouldn't have bothered, certainly not for a group that small. Ever since Salem's fall though, Grimm had begun to appear in lesser and lesser numbers, with the obvious consequence being more Huntsmen out looking for other threats, instead of being tied up dealing with their infestations. That meant more Huntsmen coming after the tribe _._ She had been forced to take them out, as far from any civilization as possible, at least until some of the heat died down. The tribe was powerful enough to beat almost anyone who might come after them, of course, but killing one Huntsman would only bring more and more until they were-

Smoke. Coming from the encampment.

The bandit drew her sword - a six-foot collapsable ōdachi with a rainbow of interchangeable Dust blades stored in the scabbard - and slashed it through the air, forming a black, shimmering portal.

She did care about the tribe's members of course, but that wasn't the reason for her rush. Each of her people had used up their safeties, so they were on their own if they couldn't fight off whoever or whatever was attacking. She was willing to save anyone she knew from anything that threatened them - one time. They got that one chance, and after that they would have to be strong enough to survive on their own. Even with power like hers, she didn't have time to keep an eye on everyone she cared about at all times, and if someone needed her help more than once then they didn't deserve it anyway.

So, she'd help the tribe fight off their attacker, but not out of any desire to help them. If whoever was attacking could fight the whole camp at once, then they'd be a threat to her as well. She needed more information, and a subtle way to get it.

Raven spawned the exit portal on a hilltop almost a mile away from camp, and shifted into her other form as she passed through. Tar-black wings took her into the air, and her newly enhanced eyesight allowed her to scan the site from a quarter-mile mile up in the air.

As she flew, she considered her possible opponents. The most obvious culprit would be one of the Kingdoms' militaries, most likely Mistral or Atlas. Vacuo was too far away to care, and Vale still hadn't rebuilt their army to the point that they could spare enough troops to pull off an attack like this.

Alternatively, it could have been the Grimm. Despite the death of the monsters' queen, many of the older creatures still lived, and could pose a viable threat if one had happened upon their camp. There were other possibilities, but Raven was forced to stop her speculation as she finally flew over the camp.

There was no movement. Barely even any wind to blow around the debris. The lack of bodies could have implied that they'd run off, chased by someone or something, but it didn't rule out the Grimm either; they didn't leave bodies to be found.

Every tent had been knocked down, burned, or shot full of holes - except for one. Her personal tent was entirely untouched. Whoever this was, they were waiting for her in particular. It was a single person - she could tell how they had moved through the camp from the layout of the battlefield.

The number of people left that were strong enough to do this alone probably didn't exceed a dozen. Compare that list to one made up of people who had reason and ability to track her down personally…

'Ah. Well, this should be interesting.'

* * *

Raven shifted back into her human form a few feet above the ground, readied her weapon, removed her mask, and entered the tent. In the middle of the room, nonchalantly leaning up against an absurdly oversized scythe planted blade-first into the ground, was a young woman, acting entirely too at ease considering the situation. Black hair dyed with red streaks topped a petite frame, mostly hidden inside a bright red cloak.

"What are you doing here?"

Ruby Rose looked up to meet her eyes. "That should be pretty obvious."

"Enlighten me."

"Come on Raven, I know you have it, even if none of your people knew what I was talking about. Where's the Relic?"

Raven scoffed. "What makes you believe that I have one? If I did then I would have used it by now. Why would I run and hide when I could just take over my own city?"

"You're not stupid. You know what would come down on your head if you used that thing for your own gain. Honestly, I'm glad you got it when you did - if Salem had gotten her hands on it then we wouldn't be having this conversation - but I need to take it back where it belongs."

"You're still assuming I have it to begin with."

"I mean, you do. We got three of them back, but Knowledge is still missing. It was stored in Haven, which is basically right next door with your Semblance, it disappeared right before Cinder would have gotten to it, and I know you can use your portals for recon. You waited until you wouldn't be seen, used your portals to break in, grabbed it and left. Nobody else has the knowledge and ability to pull off something like that without being seen, and definitely not in a room guarded by two dozen Huntsmen."

Raven paused, then responded, "And what if I do have it? You would just lock it away again."

"So you are planning to use it."

"If I don't use it, then some other disaster will come. If we haven't learned our lessons from the first time, we'll end up having to face down something even worse than Salem. Something that will make even the best of us seem weak in comparison."

Ruby hesitated, then gave a nearly imperceptible sigh. "Right. Umm… how about you come with me, and explain yourself to someone who knows more?"

Another pause. "You think I'm crazy. That after all these years your sister's murderous mother has finally cracked." It wasn't a question. "You're clearly not going to listen to me, so I'll have to be on my way."

Ruby stood, and laid a hand on her scythe, which was still stuck in the ground. "I'm not going to let you leave without handing it over. You might be powerful, but this isn't a fight that you're going to win."

"You've gotten overconfident again. Without your team you're nothing more than another Huntress."

Ruby pulled her weapon out of the ground, lowering into a combat stance. "Well I guess we're about to see if that's true, aren't we?

Raven drew a green blade and slashed an arc over her head, creating a blast of wind that blew the tent apart, leaving the pair of them standing in a mostly-empty clearing. A moment later, and the blade was back in its place, the scabbard rotating to a new color. Both Huntresses stood, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

* * *

Faster than the eye could track, Raven drew her sword, expanded the deep violet blade, and launched a wave of gravity at her target. Fortunately for Ruby, she wasn't trusting her eyes. In the split-second before the wave hit, her Aura had already reacted, warning her of the approaching threat. That gave the huntress enough time to focus that Aura, activate her Semblance, and _scatter_. Ruby vanished, and rose petals spread across the clearing in her place, only to begin drawing together to Raven's left. Another wave of gravity was sent in that direction, just before Raven's Aura flared in warning and she dropped through a newly-created portal to land safely away. Crescent Rose came from the opposite side, tearing through the space she had occupied fractions of a second before.

With a flick of her wrist, another portal appeared at Raven's feet, and her sword, purple blade now swapped out for yellow, struck through it. Ruby took advantage of her Aura's advance warning, scattering into a cloud of rose petals once more, until the yellow blade flashed and a storm of lightning forced her back to normal.

After a check to ensure that there was no lasting damage, Ruby transformed again, this time appearing as a swirling cloud of petals that speared toward Raven, shattering the Lightning Dust blade with the blunt end of her scythe. Ruby made use of the temporary advantage, disappearing again only to partially rematerialize in three places at once. The scythe-blade swung at Raven's legs, the spearhead on the end of the weapon's staff came for her side, and an Ice Dust-infused .50 caliber bullet aimed to freeze over the opening of her scabbard, preventing access to another blade.

Raven kept each of the three attacks from landing, launching herself over the scythe while summoning a portal that put the spearhead between herself and the bullet. A moment later, and she had retrieved a new blade, this one a dark shade of orange. A twirl of the blade created a dome made of rock, sealing her in as innumerable portals appeared across the clearing. Ruby was forced to dart back and forth across the clearing as beams of heat flew from one portal into another into another, covering the camp in a loose grid of fire.

Ruby closed in on the dome, expanding her Aura until she could feel the inside. She dematerialized, and then reappeared inside, ducking under Raven's swing. She was at a disadvantage in the tight space, especially once Raven collapsed her sword down. The two exchanged a whirl of attacks, blocks and parries, Raven slowly gaining the advantage and landing blows until Ruby was forced to run; running Gravity Dust along the blade of her scythe and slamming it into the wall, shattering a large portion of the dome.

Raven swung down, Ruby catching the attack on the barrel of her weapon before spinning around, sending the spearhead on the staff's base at Raven's head. Raven ducked under, sword moving in one direction while scabbard moved in another, driving at the reaper from two directions at once, only for both attacks to be deflected with a single upwards motion. Crescent Rose's barrel reached toward the sky as the staff and blade shoved the strikes away from its wielder. Ruby pushed upwards and ducked under her opponent's guard, catching the spearhead on Raven's Aura before finishing with her rifle barrel under Raven's chin.

Raven looked Ruby in the eyes. "You have grown stronger. Your Semblance has gotten impressive, It's been a long time since I've seen one so versatile"

Ruby ignored the comment, instead repeating her demand from earlier, "Either give me the Relic, or come with me back to Vale and help us sort all this out. We don't have to keep fighting!"

"If you think I'm going to give up that easily, then you still have a lot to learn about me."

Raven held out her sword, orange blade swapped out for one colored light grey, and used her Aura. A bright flash came from the sword, briefly disorienting Ruby as she slammed her scabbard into the right side of the scythe, jerking her head in the opposite direction causing the bullet to buzz by the left side of her head. She dropped through another portal, not reappearing until a few moments later. As she dropped into the clearing once more, her appearance seemed to have changed, her deep red Aura now flickering with cracks and bolts of black and blue.

Ruby's eyes widened in shock, and she charged Raven, scattering into a vortex of petals once more. Raven didn't react physically, but a flaming portal appeared nonetheless, jerking forward to intercept the scythe-wielder, burning through much of her remaining Aura and redirecting her into the ground several yards ahead of Raven. Ruby tried to stand, but she was interrupted by another portal, this one crackling with electricity, opening beneath her. The rest of her Aura was drained as she fell through, and it crackled into nonexistence as she landed at Raven's feet.

Raven stared down at her opponent as her Aura shifted back to normal, and spoke. "You wanted the Relic, well here it is. Before I decide what to do with you, what did you do with the rest of my people?"

Ruby groaned, pulling herself up onto one elbow. "Ugh… They ran away. I don't know where they went though." She hesitated a moment before tensing up and asking, "What are you going to do now?"

"Normally, anyone who attacked us like this would die. Lucky for you, however, you still have your safety. I admit it's a little unusual for me to be saving someone from myself, but I owed Summer a few favors so this will have to do."

Ruby relaxed for a moment, but then Raven continued, "That being said, I can't simply leave you here to come after us again. I can't trust you to stay with us, either, so I'm going to have to do something more... permanent." Her Aura lit up in blue and black once more as she drew her sword and slashed. A portal appeared, much more slowly than all the previous ones.

Ruby moved, grabbing her weapon and trying to scramble backwards, but there was little point. A downside of her Semblance was that using it with a depleted Aura would almost certainly be lethal, and Raven could simply make more portals if she got too far away. Raven's purple sword activated, and the portal glowed the same shade in response, beginning to suck debris in towards it. Raven simply stepped through before the pull was able to disturb her footing, but Ruby was left to be helplessly dragged backwards until she crossed the portal herself.

* * *

As I crossed the portal, I tried to make sense of where I was. Raven's portals had a huge range even when she wasn't using one of the Relics, so we could be pretty much anywhere right now. We were on something incredibly hard; concrete, or maybe something else like it. That meant we were somewhere inhabited. It was the middle of the day, so we hadn't gone very many timezones. Based off the sound of the wind, we were up very high, meaning either some kind of secret mountain base or a big city with skyscrapers. The muffled sound of traffic below told me that it was probably the latter. There weren't very many cities of that size in the world, even with the rapid expansion of the last few months. The cool temperature ruled out Atlas or Vacuo, so we were on the roof of a skyscraper in a city in either Vale or Mistral. That still meant we could be in any one of a dozen places, but it helped some.

I slowly pushed myself up to get a better look around. I didn't know why Raven would take me to a major city, but then she'd proven she... wasn't all there anymore when we were talking earlier. A glance over the roof's edge didn't reveal any obvious landmarks, so I looked back at Raven.

"Where... exactly, are we?" I asked, still out of breath. My Aura still hadn't begun to recharge; she must have hit me _hard_.

Raven stepped up onto the edge of the building, looking out at the landscape. "When someone uses a Relic, their Semblance grows exponentially more powerful. I honestly don't know where we are, but the Relic is suggesting that it's not anywhere you can get by mundane means. It's nowhere on Remnant, so you won't be coming back unless I allow you to."

Not on Remnant? What? Where else could we… No way. She was just going to leave me here? I started slowly moving backwards, in the vague direction of the portal. If I could get close enough without her seeing me...

She continued "Wherever it is, the inhabitants have technology. You'll be comfortable."

She was totally gonna leave me here. "And when will you come back for me?"

I was forced to stop crawling as she turned to face me. "I don't plan to. You challenged me, and you failed. You attacked my tribe. Either of those would earn anyone else a swift death; I'm being kind by doing this." She began walking back towards the portal.

Crap, she was leaving now! As she walked past me, I launched to my feet and ran past her, trying to get through before it closed, only for Raven to swing her scabbard around and slam it into my midsection. I keeled over, she stepped through, and the portal blinked closed before I could try again.

I stood there staring for a moment. It took until then for Raven's words to click. I was, somehow, on another world. I had no idea where I was, no way back home, and only enough supplies for a couple of weeks.

I walked over to the roof edge, and looked out over the city.

It was on the coast, like Vale, but seemed to be a lot smaller. It couldn't have been much bigger than Patch. The ocean breeze was blowing in from across the water, reminding me of Mom's grave on Patch. I was standing on one of a few very tall office buildings, facing toward the water. The building across from me had a logo printed near the top; a black crown on a red-and-yellow checkerboard background. Past that were eight or nine city blocks running right up to the edge of the water. The coastline curved sharply away from me in both directions, and floating in the middle of the bay was a huge building with a clear glowing dome covering it like an Aura.

Looking down, I could see people and cars, with smaller apartment buildings tucked between the skyscrapers. Farther inland, there were houses, spread out much further apart than I would have expected, but given that there weren't any walls around the city they must be able to afford the space.

The whole place was really different, even if there seemed to be a few similarities from up here. This was gonna be really hard.

* * *

 **Alright, so this is an AN. My first AN, actually, so that's exciting. This is the first thing I've ever written for something other than school, and a large portion of my reason for writing it is so I could improve my abilities for other things. I've looked through for typos, but it's very possible that I've missed some, so please let me know about any of those. On top of that, if I screw up my characterization or get anything wrong in terms of keeping to Worm canon, feel free to yell at me about that too. I'm not gonna improve without criticism, so as long as it's constructive feel free to keep it coming!**

 **In less exciting news, I'm going to be waiting a bit before posting the next chapter. I'd like to build up a backlog before posting more, but I wanted to get this out as a sort of pilot episode to gauge interest and ensure my writing style is bearable. The next chapter will be out by this time next month at an a** ** _bsolute_** **maximum, and hopefully I'll be able to start a schedule by then.**


	2. Seed 1-2

**Seed 1.2**

This was going to be easier than I thought! This place is really weird though...

Getting down from the building had been pretty simple, I just had to use my Semblance and I could float down on the breeze. It hadn't taken long to realize that people here dressed differently either; I figured that out while I was still halfway up the building. Most people seemed to wear very drab colors, at least compared to what was common on Remnant. Luckily, brighter outfits didn't seem to be totally unheard of, and I was able to wrap my cape around myself as a cloak to hide my outfit and weapon.

My Semblance kept being useful, making me harder to see as I did some people-watching so I could learn how to not stand out once I figured out enough of what I needed to survive here. The first thing I learned doing that was that, somehow, the people here spoke Vytalian. Not every phrase made sense, but it was similar enough that I shouldn't draw too much attention when was talking to someone. That didn't make it any less confusing though; if this wasn't Remnant, then how did they speak my language?

Luckily, the writing on the signs was pretty much the same too, so I decided to find a library for better information. If if it was anything like the ones back on Remnant, then I might be able to access the CCT network and learn more about this place. It wasn't exactly my best plan ever, but I didn't have any other ideas at the moment. Trying to figure out where the library was took a while, but a lot of that involved working up the courage to ask someone. I'm nowhere near as awkward now as I was back at Beacon, but walking up to a stranger in a place I'd never even heard of and asking for directions was a little bit odd. I got awkward looks the whole way there, but I was probably gonna have to get used to that, at least until I got a change of clothes.

* * *

I realized how very different this place was be while I was doing that research. They had terminals there, though they were lower-tech than what I was used to. Everything was mechanical or electronic, compared to the holograms from back home. That seemed strange until, looking stuff up, I realized that this world didn't have Dust. Back on Remnant it was the basis pretty much all modern technology, but the tech here was totally different. Cars ran off of something called "gasoline," bullets were fired by "gunpowder," and houses were powered by all kinds of things that I'd never heard of before. I would have thought that would have changed more, but outside of communication systems most of what they had built here was pretty much identical to what would have been normal on Remnant a decade ago.

There were no references to the Grimm anywhere in my search. I guess that makes sense if Salem never existed here, but it was still a shock. Even after six months, the idea of a world without the constant threat of the Grimm was hard to grasp. In a world where expansion wasn't slowed by an endless tide of monsters, this world had ended up with dozens of different Kingdoms, and a population of almost seven billion; more than fifty times as many as Remnant. The lack of Grimm had hanged other things too; this world had a concrete idea of what their history looked like going back thousands of years. What history I had learned got all patchy and contradictory once you got more than a few hundred years ago, thanks to how quickly most Kingdoms had fallen back then.

Of course, the lack of Grimm didn't mean that this world didn't have its own problems. Many more nations just meant many more wars, and a higher population just meant more meat for the grinder. Even when the first appearances of a man named "Scion" put a stop to the most destructive wars, new threats had arisen in the form of giant, unkillable monsters called Endbringers. For the last several decades, one of these things had apparently shown up every few months, wrecked a city, and then left, killing as many people as they could in the process. Despite how relatively new they were, and even without the constant destruction of outlying towns, they had already caused more civilian deaths than the Grimm had in the last fifty years. The cities here weren't designed to hold off attacks like on Remnant, and so their appearances almost always did horrific damage.

Huntsmen didn't seem to exist here either, at least not in the same form. I guess that there wouldn't have been a need for them here. They had people with Semblances, but those people were called "Parahumans" or "Capes." They usually hid their identities behind masks and silly names, almost like out of a comic book, but I couldn't figure out why from what I found browsing the "Internet." They also used their powers pretty much exclusively, most of them not bothering to use a weapon. Maybe they'd copied the comics; Parahumans hadn't been around for much longer than the Endbringers had, so that was possible. The other possibility came to me when I noticed something scary: there were no references to Aura, either. Aura was supposed to be the manifestation of the soul; the thing that makes us alive and sentient. The fact that they didn't have it here had some scary implications, though I wasn't sure whether those were about the people here or the nature of Aura itself.

As for where I was, I found an answer to that too. This city, Brockton Bay, was apparently in a Kingdom called the United States, on a planet called Earth. More helpfully, I had found out what Raven's portals had done; this world had discovered and contacted an alternate reality, like out of a science-fiction movie. That probably meant that Remnant was yet another reality, and if these people had managed to punch a hole into one, then maybe they could do it to another. If anyone would be able to get me back home, it would be the people who made that hole. Unfortunately, the guy who did that, a supervillain named Professor Haywire, had been killed years before. He'd had a technological Semblance; they were incredibly rare back on Remnant, but apparently more typical here. Nobody seemed to know where his technology had gone, but if I could find it then I might just be able to use it to get back home.

Apparently, that massive floating building I saw in the bay was a sort of home base for a team of Capes that worked for the government, calling themselves the Protectorate. They seemed like the most official group around, and had bases across this entire continent, so my best bet would probably be to go to them. I wasn't sure how to get out to their base, but they had a partner group called the PRT inside the city itself, so I should be able to go there instead. I started heading that way not long after; using my Semblance to keep to the rooftops so I wouldn't attract even more attention. After looking at some of the costumes the capes here wore, I'd realized that I looked a lot like one of them; even though I wasn't wearing a mask, I didn't want people to mistake me for something I wasn't.

* * *

I really should have looked at a map. They had them right there at the library entrance, I could have grabbed one, it would have been simple, but no, I didn't need one, I was gonna find my way there all by myself!

About half an hour of wandering later, I was just about to give up and ask someone else for directions when I started hearing gunfire. It picked up after a moment, and I ducked into an alley so I could get to the top of a building without being spotted. I had to focus now; gunfire meant people were in danger, and even if Huntsmen didn't exist here that wasn't going to stop me from helping.

The next street over was… hectic. A group of around forty people wearing civilian clothes and armed with pistols and shotguns were on one end, taking cover behind a group of big trucks. Looking the other way, I saw a group of a dozen men with professional-looking gear and automatic weapons. As I watched, they advanced up to the next alley in such an organized way that I had to double-check to make sure there were no military markings. I didn't see anything obvious, so either this was some kind of special forces operation or they were just exceptionally well-trained. The location didn't really help either theory though; this wasn't exactly the most high-brow area, so why would anybody like that be fighting here?

I wasn't really sure which I should be helping here. The soldiers looked more official, but then the civilians could just be defending themselves. Before I could make a decision though, it was made for me.

The ground began to shake in time to loud footsteps, moving quickly towards us. Charging down the street from behind the civilians was a pair of feminine giants wearing stylized plate armor. One had a sword and shield, and the other used a spear. They were running far faster than even the cars I'd seen driving around, but they slowed to a stop as they reached the civilians. The one with the shield crouched down to give their allies some extra cover while her partner one got down on a knee, apparently to speak with the leaders.

I sort of remembered these two from the library research, but I couldn't remember who they were beyond being villains. I probably should have spent more time memorizing, but it was too late now.

After talking for a second, during which the pair seemed totally unconcerned by a whole lot of bullets coming from the soldiers, they turned and led the civilians in a charge, forcing the soldiers back. They barely reacted any time they got shot, and even getting hit where their armor didn't protect them didn't seem to do as much damage as it should have. These two's Semblance was more complex than just being really big, they were tougher than they should be too.

The soldiers had started falling back as soon as the giants had shown up, but now they were in full retreat. They had gone part way down an alley and pulled out in a pair of vans, but the giantesses easily outran the vehicles and stopped them before they'd gotten more than half a block away. They jabbed at the tires and engines, then started hacking at the van roofs.

I made my decision as the giantesses got through the armored tops of the vans, and started stabbing down into them. I pulled my hood up over my face, extended my scythe to its full length, and dematerialized.

This wasn't the first time I'd interrupted a fight like this. From the perspective of the people on the street, a huge wave of rose petals would have crashed into the fight, then swirled together into a massive vortex that would collapse into me, standing on top of the lead van's cab. The more scared of me they were, the less likely anyone would be to try anything immediately, so I chose a more intimidating pose to reveal myself. The scythe's blade pointed up into the air, while the tip of the barrel hovered above the driver's-side mirror and the staff angled up in the other direction. My cloak flared out in every direction, but the storm of leftover rose petals kept them from seeing anything other than the scythe for the first few seconds.

The moment I appeared, the giantesses dropped into defensive stances. Rose petals floated on the wind around me, created as a side-effect of my Semblance. The pair shared a glance, then began circling me in opposite directions as the spear-wielder spoke. They planned to flank me, while keeping me from realizing it by distracting me with talk. The strategy would also give them a good guess of my experience level; anyone that didn't see through through such an obvious trick, would probably be pretty new at this. I decided against reacting; being flanked wouldn't make it any harder on me, and if it forced them to underestimate me then that was just a bonus.

"Whoever you are, I'd suggest you leave. This isn't your fight, and we'd hate to accidentally kill you. Why don't you go pick a fight with the Merchants instead?" The woman's voice dripped with contempt.

I was never very good at the banter if my only goal was to insult, so I didn't bother responding to the jab. Instead, I brought Crescent Rose around, and slammed her into the roof of the van, barrel pointing at the one with the spear.

The pair charged simultaneously, the spear on my left and the sword on my right. They crossed the distance between us in less than a second; so fast that my first warning was from my Aura instead of any movement on their part. I scattered, dashing around the street, then a roof, then jumping onto Sword's shoulders, jerking around to stay unpredictable. I caught her around the bicep with my scythe before pulling the trigger, making sure the bullet would go safely into her partner's breastplate, and using the recoil to cut deeper into her armor before launching off and landing in the street to gauge the effect.

Her armor had taken a little damage, but the cut wasn't more than a few inches deep. They definitely weren't taking as much damage as they should have been. I'd have to try something different.

My opponents finally figured out where I'd gone, and turned to face me. They were incredibly fast for their size, but they didn't seem to have the reaction time to make full use of that speed. I could use that. I used my Semblance, dematerializing the standard Flame Dust ammunition and swapping them with less dangerous Shock rounds, then sped towards the one I hadn't attacked yet. She tried to defend with her spear between us, but I casually went around it, latched onto her arm, and fired a round into a small patch of exposed skin of her partner's neck. She jumped, apparently startled by the shock, but there wasn't much of an effect otherwise. Apparently, their damage reduction extended to energy too.

That wasn't good. I didn't have a way to hurt them without killing them, and I'd rather not have that be my first act in this new world. Meanwhile, I wasn't going to be able to avoid their attacks forever, and if the strength they showed pulling apart the vans meant anything, then one lucky hit on their part could probably pulverise me.

I blurred away from a shield bash, then shot backwards, launching off the inside of the shield itself. I caught the blade of my scythe on the inside of Sword's leg, ricocheting off Spear's abdomen and shoving my blade down to the hilt into Sword's collarbone. That was a better hit, actually drawing blood, but it didn't really accomplish much of anything. My Aura flared, and I scattered to avoid a spear thrust, reappearing on the spear itself. I jumped down, landing on the ground before charging at Spear's leg. I dodged a counterattack, jumped behind her, then caught Crescent Rose's blade on the back of her knee, pulling the trigger to force her down. I jumped up, ran up her back, then swung the blunt end of my scythe at the back of her head. She fell onto her hands and knees, but I was forced to dodge a slash from her partner before I could take advantage.

Spear was up in a flash, and the pair charged. I charged right back, controlling the pace of the fight and trying to break the giantesses' weapons. I almost ran Dust up into my scythe's blade before thinking better of wasting something I couldn't replace, and instead cut as deeply into the base of the spear as I could. I jumped around, Aura flaring constantly as my opponents moved, and eventually ran back in, landing another cut at the same point. None of the slices ran very deep on their own, but the span of the next minute they built up until a final hit snapped the spear in two.

No-Longer-Spear jumped backwards, and her partner ran up to cover her. The shield would have made this harder, but apparently the pair had been scared by my stunt with the spear. They had started retreating, and I really had no way to stop them. They weren't going anywhere near their full speed yet, but based on how they were moving earlier they might be able to outrun me for long enough to shrink back down and hide if they really needed to.

I ran up a building and jumped from rooftop to rooftop, then shot back down just ahead of them, aiming to make them turn around so I could sweep a leg again, but they just skidded to a stop and made a turn into an alley. I made to follow them, but the tight quarters forced me up onto one of the neighboring buildings until they exited into the next street over.

That pattern continued for a while longer, and I was getting farther away from my original goal. I was debating simply giving up and letting them go when I heard an inhumanly loud yell from behind me. I manifested, having scattered in order to keep up as the pair gained speed, and spun, watching as another duo flew in, held aloft by a vibrant silver field. One of the two jumped down, wearing a white bodysuit with a lion-themed helmet and pauldrons, and shouted again, the knocking Sword off her feet. A sound similar to a Dust-powered engine came from the other end of the street, and a motorcycle pulled up, a man in blue and white power armor wielding a high-tech polearm blocking the giantesses' retreat. The last cape, wearing light, silver-colored armor over yellow fabric, remained on the forcefield, with a swarm of smaller fields floating around him. He hovered next to me, extended a hand, and spoke with a slight accent.

"Hey there! You can call me Challenger, what should I call you?".

* * *

 **Chapter 2 is finally done! That backlog I mentioned last time didn't really pan out, but I have started on Chapter 3. You can expect that one to come in right around the end of the month.**

 **I also feel like I should mention that not every chapter of this is gonna be a fight scene and/or exposition. These last two chapters have been the result of me being terrified of writing dialogue, but that should hopefully change soon.**

 **As always, yell at me if I've screwed something up, and I will see y'all in a few weeks!**


	3. Seed 1-3

**Seed 1.3**

I recognized these guys as Protectorate members from the library research. "I'm Ruby," I said, jumping onto the platform with my Semblance.

He jumped a bit at the sudden speed, but took it in stride. "Ruby, huh? Surprised that name wasn't taken." He looked down the street, at where the other two heroes were squaring off with the giants. "How'd this all start? I assume you didn't try to go after these two on your first day of capery?"

Wait, what? No, why did he think… Right. My face was still covered by my hood, so he had assumed I was a cape. Whatever, I could deal with that later. "Nope Those two were attacking some military-looking guys, so I stepped in before anybody got killed. Everybody got away, but I don't have any real way to catch the giants without killing them."

As I spoke, sections of the forcefield we were standing on began breaking off, joining the cloud floating around us. "Military? Huh, I don't think that was any of our guys." The smaller pieces of forcefield suddenly darted forward, blocking off one end of the street with tiny fragments that reformed into a single, massive sheet. With the field on one end and the two other heroes on the other, the giantesses were trapped. He continued; "It must have been some of Coil's mercs. They've spent the last few weeks carving themselves a chunk of downtown, so this would have been the Nazis pushing back."

I had no idea who or what he was talking about, but I guess he would know the area better than I would. Speaking of which: "These two are hard for me to pin down, are they gonna be a problem for you three?"

"They will be if their backup gets here before we can get them contained. Assault, Battery, and Velocity are running interference on that though, so as long as we wrap this up fast then we should be able to take them in. You up for it?"

"You bet I am. What should I do?"

"Armsmaster and Triumph shouldn't have any problems taking down an unarmed Menja, so if you can help me deal with Fenja - ah, that's the one with the sword, by the way - we should be good to go. You're the reason Menja lost her spear, right? If I can contain Fenja's movements, do you think you could disarm her too?"

Well, that shouldn't be hard. I'd almost managed it myself, earlier, so with Challenger's help, this should be easy. "Works for me. You ready?"

A nod from him, and I was off. I jumped down to the street and charged my target. She saw me coming immediately and tried to get her partner's attention. Before she could get there though, another cloud of miniature forcefields shot between them and solidified into a single barrier.

The unarmed giantess turned to face her opponents as her partner, or Fenja, apparently, drew her sword back and drove it into the field. When the blow bounced off without any apparent damage, she spun and dropped down again, shield held up defensively but ready to spring away as soon as she needed to. I saw the man in armor preparing to face down Menja on the far side before putting it out of my mind to focus on my own fight.

Fenja had crouched down, shield in front with Challenger's forcefield at her back. She stayed there, apparently waiting for me to make the first move. A different strategy than last time, it seems. Hoping she would fare better on the defensive?

I stopped a short distance ahead of her and began to stretch my Aura. This was hard, and I couldn't do it very far, but it was great at catching people off-guard. Rose petals filled the space my Aura occupied whenever I used my Semblance, but enough slipped through that I could manage stuff like this without being noticed if I was fast and my opponent didn't know to watch for it. As the outer edge of my Aura reached her, I scattered, reappearing on her shoulder and tightrope-walking along her arm towards the back of her shield.

She jumped, almost falling over before frantically swatting at me with the pommel of her sword. I dodged her first attempts, but once she started shaking her arm to get me off I had to run on the underside of her arm, catching my scythe on her forearm and swinging forward. One burst of speed got me where I needed to go, and I slashed at the leather strap holding the shield to her wrist. The reduction in damage wasn't quite enough to protect it, and the shield fell to hang awkwardly off her elbow. I launched off the inside of her arm, aiming to cross to her other arm to deal with the sword, but she recovered her balance and spun, forcing me to scatter around her sword on the backswing.

She started grabbing at her shield, but I needed that to stay right where it was. Before I hit the ground, I charged forward, forcing her to leave the shield where it was as she tried to dodge a swing at her right side, bringing her sword around to strike again. Before she could though, yet another forcefield cloud swooped in and solidified, keeping her from moving out of the way before I landed the blow. The field kept her from rolling with the hit, and before she could regain her balance I was back on the street, scythe behind her left knee as I pulled the trigger, using the recoil to send the giant to one knee. One more jump up and the blunt end smacked her in the head, putting her on the ground.

Once she was there, what remained of the forcefield from the far side of the street - apparently, the field that had tripped up Fenja had been made of the top half of that one - broke apart, then flew towards us and formed into a pyramid around her, keeping her down. I saw that Challenger was now standing on a rooftop, apparently having given up his ride in exchange for more barriers. Turning around, I saw that the other two capes-

Wow. These people are _slow_ , even by the standards of other Huntsmen.

That fight had barely even gotten started. The guy in armor was just now closing the last few feet, while the other one just stared in my direction, jaw hanging open until armor-guy ended the awkwardness: "Triumph! Focus!"

Lion-guy, or Triumph, I guess, snapped back to his fight, where his partner had engaged Fenja. Armor-guy was faster in a fight than I'd thought at first, and he seemed to be pretty skilled compared to what else I'd seen here. Fenja grabbed for him, but Triumph opened his mouth and shouted, creating a solid wave of sound that forced her to cross her arms across her face in defense. His partner used the distraction, turning the head of his polearm into a grappling hook, which fired upwards and latched to her shoulder. She got pulled slightly down as he went up, slicing at her abdomen as he rose over her hands.

She kept grabbing and punching, but he had landed inside where she could easily get to him. He clambered up and over her shoulder, and dropped to the ground, slicing his weapon down her back and rolling between her legs. Jumping up and catching each his weapon on the back of her right knee and the front of her left, he spun around, activating some kind of thruster on the back of the blade. She went down on one knee, just like her partner had. Another shout from Triumph, who had moved around beside and behind her, and she was on her hands, scrambling to stand back up. The blade of the polearm started glowing red, and its wielder brought it around, slicing it into a gap in her armor, just above her ankle. She screamed, Triumph shouted again, and she went down.

That was so cool! How had he done that without Dust!? I could maybe see some kind of electrical gadget heating up the metal, but doing it that quickly should have made some kind of sparks, and that wasn't even bringing up the rocket!

Whew. Okay, Ruby, you need to focus now.

While I'd been geeking out, the dividing barrier between us had broken down, most of it reforming into another containment pyramid as a chunk broke off and headed back towards Challenger.

Armor-guy brought his weapon around, sticking it to his back as he walked towards me. He held out a gauntlet. "You seem to be new around here. Do you have a name?"

I started to respond, then stopped. Challenger had assumed I was a cape, and it would probably be good to stop any confusion. I removed my hood and answered his question. "You can call me Ruby."

His reaction was muted, but it was there. The visor over the top half of his face hid his eyes, but his head tilted fractionally and he shifted position. Triumph, behind him, just started staring again.

"Most capes try to keep a secret identity, to protect their friends and family. You should probably give the idea of giving it up like that a little more thought."

Heh. I think my friends and family can protect themselves just fine. Either way though…

"Yeah… about that. I don't really have a regular identity, at least not here. There's some stuff we need to talk about, and I think we should do that in private. At risk of being a little cliche... I'm not quite from around here."

* * *

"Well. That's quite a story. I don't suppose you have any proof?"

The heroes had cut their patrol short in light of my appearance, and once the van had shown up to contain the giantesses more permanently, Challenger had taken me and Triumph to the PRT building. Right now, I was talking to a woman that Armsmaster had called Director Piggot. Apparently, the person in charge of all the local superheroes didn't have powers of her own. That was odd, but not really important now.

"You could have someone look at the bullets from my scythe. They're made of a few different types of crystal that I'm pretty sure you don't have here."

At that, she shared a glance with Armsmaster, who turned and stepped out of the room. That left me here with just Piggot behind her desk and Challenger leaning against the wall behind me.

Piggot continued: "If Armsmaster confirms that, then this is beyond my pay grade. I'll probably end up sending this to the Chief Director, but I'd like to know as much as possible now, to save some time. My first question is how you got here. You mentioned you were trapped, but why did you come here in the first place? Do we need to worry about more people coming through from this… Remnant?"

Crap. I knew I was going to get asked that eventually, but I still hadn't thought of a way to do it without giving away a lot more than I wanted to. The Relics were classified beyond all belief back home, and I doubted Oscar would be very happy if I ended up telling everybody here.

"I was sent here by my stepmother, Raven. She abandoned her team a long time ago to go lead a tribe of bandits, and now that the Grimm are gone, I got sent to track her down."

"The Grimm?"

Ah right, they never had them here. "The Grimm are... monsters that used to be all over the world, killing and… eating anyone they came across and destroying everything they could. They've been around forever, as far as anybody can tell, but they stopped showing up a few months ago."

She hummed a little at that, and I kept up my discussion of Raven.

"Anyway, Raven's worldview is… odd. She has this rule where she'll only save any given person a single time, but anyone she cares about is definitely going to get saved once. She won our fight once I finally found her, and because she still owed me a saving, she sent me here instead of just killing me. It's hard to say whether or not it could happen again; I'd say it doesn't seem likely, but Raven is hard to predict at the best of times."

Piggot pressed on, "But how, exactly, did she get you here? I need to know if other people could use the same methods."

Dang it, she's quick. How to explain this without giving away everything... "Her Semblance-

Challenger interrupted, "Semblance?"

Oh, yeah. "That's basically Remnant's word for superpowers. Raven's Semblance lets her make portals between locations. She stole a… thing that can enhance a person's Semblance, and that apparently let her make portals here."

"What kind of thing?"

"...I really don't want to say."

Piggot raised an eyebrow, but didn't do anything otherwise. She was hiding it well, but I wasn't sure if I'd seen a positive face on her since I'd gotten here. I clarified, "This stuff is really, really secret back home, and with good reason."

That was true, for the moment anyway. The Grimm were attracted to negative emotions, and people learning of superweapons like the Relics could have caused a panic. In a few years, once the Grimm had been Hunted to extinction, that would hopefully change, but for the moment we were still keeping these things secret. Just because that reasoning doesn't apply here doesn't make it okay to start blabbing everything.

She kept staring for a moment, then responded, "Fine. I can't promise that the Chief Director will let you keep that secret, but I suppose I won't press you for it now."

I guess that was as good as I was going to get. She wasn't happy about me keeping that to myself, though. To be honest, she didn't seem to be a big fan of me in general.

She continued, "Challenger, take Ruby here somewhere. I have some calls to make regarding this whole situation."

I was about to protest, but Challenger interrupted. "Yes ma'am, let us know what you manage to find." He turned, and seeing Piggot start talking into a little box - a Scroll, I realized - I stood up and followed.

As the door closed behind us, Challenger turned to me. "You hungry? I don't think the Director would be happy with us leaving, but we could head down to the cafeteria." I nodded, and we started walking.

As we went, Challenger started asking questions. "So, you're from an alternate world. I've learned some stuff about Earth Aleph, but from what you talked about in there it sounds like your world split off a whole lot more than thirty years ago. What's it like there? Y'know, other than the constant attacks by creatures apparently out of my kid's nightmares?"

"Really, really, different to here. I saw a world map earlier, and even the continents are shaped differently. We only have four kingdoms, and up until recently, the space between them was filled with horrible monsters. Technologically, Remnant's like forty years ahead, but armies still use swords and spears right alongside guns and grenades, and we've never managed to put anything into space. Huntsmen get trained in the use of their powers practically from the moment they gain them, but don't typically work for any single government once they… graduate…" I trailed off as I caught myself rambling. "Sorry."

He chuckled at that. "Perfectly alright, I'm just curious. The 'Huntsmen' you mentioned, those are basically Remnant's version of superheroes, right?"

"Pretty much. We're organized a little differently, but we do a lot of the same stuff. Huntsmen tend to focus more on the Grimm, but until recently that was kind of a necessity."

"Recently? What changed?"

"That's… kind of a long story. The Grimm were created by a woman who called herself Salem, but about six months ago…"

We fought, surrounded by the violet crags of the Witch's lands. The ground, littered with corpses, ash, and puddles of black slime, spawned Grimm almost as fast as we could kill them. Weiss and Blake slaughtered the monsters as quickly as they could as I fought to gain control of my true power - and the world vanished behind a curtain of Silver.

"...A big group of Huntsmen finally tracked her down and killed her, and they've stopped appearing since."

He gave me a look, but otherwise didn't respond to my obvious hesitance, which I was thankful for. Even though team RWBY had made it through intact, lots of others hadn't. It hadn't exactly been a fun fight. We arrived at the cafeteria then, not attracting much attention despite the many troopers inside. I had my hood over my face again, and apparently, capes were a common enough sight here that nobody bothered us beyond a few initial glances.

That was nice, to be honest. The relative lack of undeserved admiration felt a little bit like home.

As we walked over to the buffet line, he changed the subject. "Your plan for coming here was to ask to use Haywire's tech to return home, right?" At my nod, he continued, "Well I'm hardly a Tinker, so I don't know much about how all that stuff works, but as far as I know big projects like that tend to take some time. You have any ideas as to what you'll be doing in the meantime?"

Tinker? Oh, he meant technicals like Haywire or Merlot. "I… hadn't quite thought that far , to be honest. I only got here a couple hours ago, after all. I was kind of hoping that you guys could help out with that, but I guess that's not quite the PRT's job."

"Why would you think that? I'll grant, your circumstances make you a bit of a special case, but as far as I know, in the eyes of the law, you're basically a superpowered refugee. Throw in your skills and experience, and I don't see any reason why you couldn't just stay here. You could keep doing pretty much what you did on Remnant, you get a place to sleep and food to eat, and we get another powerful cape helping us beat the crap out of this city's gangs. It's a win-win!"

I hadn't thought about that! "Hey, that would be great! We'd have to convince the Director though, and I'm not sure she likes me. Is she gonna be alright with this?"

"Ah, noticed that, did you? It shouldn't be a problem, she's like that with pretty much everybody, and she never stops lobbying to get more capes transferred here. She's not gonna argue with you joining up."

"Alright then, where do I sign up?"

"And also, where did you put my scythe? I'm gonna need that back."

* * *

 **Whew. I just barely finished this in time. I was away from my computer for a week and I think that moved the deadline up farther than I expected it to.**

 **We actually have plot development now! Granted, it's development that every one of you saw coming, but at least it's something, right? I'm going to try to get Chapter 4 out by the fourteenth, but I'm not a hundred percent sure I can manage that. I'll guarantee it by the twenty-first though.**

 **See you all later!**


	4. Seed 1-4

**Seed 1.4**

"So, you've got a few decisions to make."

"Alright…"

"The first is where you'll be living. Your first option is we set you up with an apartment in the city; it would be a lot nicer than whatever you get staying here, but you'd have to spend a lot more time maintaining your civilian identity to protect your neighbors. The alternative is staying here; you'll spend a lot less time hiding who you are, and you won't need to deal with travel time in an emergency, but your accommodations won't be quite as comfortable."

"I'll take the second one. I've slept in worse conditions before, and hopefully, I shouldn't be here for long anyway."

Not long after Challenger had made his offer, Piggot had called him to say that Armsmaster had confirmed my story. From what she had said, he wanted to have a long conversation about Dust in the near future, but that would have to wait until I was settled in. I hadn't quite realized just how much paperwork would be involved in signing on here, though they weren't making me do much of it.

It probably didn't help that they were setting up a civilian identity for me at the same time - even if I'd be staying here at the Rig, I'd need ID and legal papers.

"Alright, that'll work. We can find you a dorm somewhere isolated if that's what you'd prefer. That way you won't get woken up at all hours of the night by shift changes and the like," The man across from me said, writing on his clipboard. He'd never given me his name, instead just sitting me down

"I'll be fine pretty much wherever," I responded.

"Okay then, next question; I've been told that you don't have much to your name at the moment, so we'll ask you to set up a shopping list. That costume is all you have for clothes, right?"

"Uhh… Yeah, that's kind of a long-"

"Yep, I assume so. So, as long as you don't mind the PRT colors, we can get you a few sets of clothes to wear until you've got some stuff of your own."

"That shouldn't be a problem, my S… powers tend to keep stuff cleaner than it would be otherwise."

He whistled at that. "Dang, I'm jealous. Ah, let's see… we're pretty much done here. You'll be meeting with the Branding department as soon as we're done here to discuss your name and costume, plus a meeting with…" He glanced up at me, eyebrows raised. "Dragon? How'd you manage to attract that kind of attention?"

Dragon? Another cape? This was the first I'd heard of this schedule, so I had no idea who that was or why I was meeting them. If that was unusual though, then I could assume it had something to do with my circumstances, so best not to give that away. "Uh… I'm not sure?"

He shot me a look across the table. Yeah, there's no way he bought that. He didn't pry though, so I guess it was pretty normal for people to be keeping secrets around him. "Right. You'll be speaking with Dragon tomorrow, right after a brief bit of power testing so we can get a rough idea of your limits. The Image meeting is about all you've got left today, and then we'll get you set up. Assault should be right outside to escort you to where you need to go while I go find you a room." He stood, and I did the same.

We walked outside to find a man dressed in an armored, skintight bodysuit colored bright red, paired with a matching red mask across the top half of his face.

He grinned from ear to ear and stuck out a hand. "Hiya there, my name's Assault, I'm sure you've heard of me!"

Uhh… Okay. "I haven't, actually." I shook his hand

He slapped one hand to his chest and another to his mouth in mock offense. "Oh! You wound me. I'm forced to assume you're from some backwater nowhere; clearly, that is the only possible explanation for this tragedy!"

I was smiling now, despite myself. This guy's over-the-top infectious personality kinda reminded me of Nora. Just, y'know, saner.

As the other guy walked away to set everything up, I returned; "Oh no, I come from a great and mighty kingdom! However, it is quite a large distance from here, so that must be the reason. Please, regale me with the tales of your exploits!"

"Hah!" he responded, "You're gonna be cool, I can already tell. Nobody else gives me anything to work with there." We began walking, me following alongside him. "So! I had to sit through this whole meeting about what we could or couldn't ask you, so this oughta be an interesting conversation. What all can you do?"

I knew that feeling. I'd just gotten here that morning, but I'd just gotten out of my third meeting that day. For some reason, the Protectorate seemed to be a bit anxious to get me joined up. "What do you mean, what can I do?"

"Your powers! I pestered Armsy into showing me his recording, but it didn't tell me all that much. I heard you're a speedster?" We turned left, heading for a bank of elevators.

Oh. Well, at least that was something I could talk about in public. I wasn't supposed to use the Remnan terms for stuff, but I could deal with that. "That used to be what I thought, but I learned how to use it better over time and found out that there was more to it. I can turn into a sort of cloud of rose petals inside a forcefield that moves fast, but it turned out I can fly too, and make it so that only certain pieces of me or my gear are solid at any given time."

"Huh. How'd you bring down someone like Fenja then? Triumph said you pretty much dismantled her."

"Well, part of that is my scythe, Crescent Rose." No need to give the whole spiel now Ruby, keep it simple. "It's got a sniper rifle built into it that can fire a bunch of different types of bullets. I've been using both the scythe and my power pretty much nonstop for the last few years, so I've had some practice."

"Crescent Rose… you named your weapon?" he asked.

"Uhh… yes?" I replied as we exited the elevators into another corridor. This place was a maze, and I was becoming very glad that I'd had people leading me around this whole time.

His mask, covering little more than his eyes and chin, was pretty revealing compared to Armsmaster's opaque visor and Challenger's featureless silver expanse, and it served to show off his facial expressions. He gained a bit of a thoughtful expression, then busted out into another grin. "How much you wanna bet that Armsy names all his halberds too?"

I thought back to what I had seen of Armsmaster's personality out of public view and laughed along with him. "Alright, so, you went through something like what I am right now when you first joined up, right? What should I be expecting here?"

"Hmm… you're meeting with Branding next, right? Different departments are going to be run ."

"I think that's what he said," I answered.

"Yeah, I'm not sure how much I can help you there. I was kind of a special case when I went in for that too, so I'm not sure how much of this will be accurate. I had a bit of a history before joining up, and for various reasons, they didn't want the new me connected to the old me." That seemed like a story, but I didn't want to interrupt. "They changed up my cape name, costume, and public persona so that nobody could make the connection. They're probably not gonna go that far with you, but I couldn't tell you any details."

"Okay, thanks anyway." We made another turn "Can I ask what that 'history' is about?"

"Ah, that's a story for another time, I'm afraid. The whole deal is still pretty classified, and you're not technically a full member yet. You know what it's like, I'm sure."

I did, in fact. I had never enjoyed keeping secrets, but getting wrapped up in as much as I had back home had made it so I accidentally stumbled into a whole lot of them. I had kind of hoped that I wouldn't have to worry about that kind of thing here, but the tangled webs of clearances and confidentiality were even larger here than they were back home.

We arrived at our destination - an otherwise unremarkable door with the word 'Branding' printed across it, just beneath the window. Assault spoke up, easily sliding back into his posh accent, "And this is where we shall part ways, milady. Another should be awaiting the completion of your meeting to take you back your chambers. I bid you adieu." With a fake, cheesy bow, he turned and walked away, leaving me to enter the room.

I opened the door, knocking on the frame to let the people inside know I was here. "Hello?"

The room wasn't anything special, containing a dozen or so desks along with a large TV mounted in the back corner and posters of each of the local heroes spread out across each wall. There was very little color or decoration on the desks themselves; I wouldn't have connected it to somewhere devoted to appearances.

The room didn't have any people in it, except for one guy with dark hair and skin. He stood up from where he had been seated behind one of the desks. "Hey, how's it going? My name's Shane Lynch, I'll be leading the team responsible for introducing you to the public and keeping them happy with you while you're here. I've been cleared on your whole situation, and I kicked everybody else out, so you can speak freely if you want. Feel free to unmask if you'd be more comfortable."

Finally! I pulled my hood back down as he walked over to another desk, pulling its wheely chair over in front of his. I'd been wearing it around all day, and as much as I loved that cloak I was much happier now that I could look around. I took the offered seat as he walked around as sat back down in his chair.

"So, before we start off, do you have any questions about what you've seen so far?" He asked.

"Yeah, actually. The Resource Managment guy mentioned that I had a meeting with somebody named Dragon tomorrow, and treated it like something special. Do you know what that's about?"

His eyebrows rose. "I hadn't heard about that, but I guess it makes sense. Dragon's a Tinker, one of the best in the world. If anybody would be able to understand Haywire's tech, it'd be her.

Any other questions?"

"Just one more right now. This whole process feels rushed; is that normal, or do you guys want me on board faster for some reason?"

"That's one I can't answer for certain, I'm afraid. This is going awfully fast compared to the usual, but I couldn't tell you why. I'm just a PR guy, they don't tell me that kind of thing. They only told me about your background so that I wouldn't be caught off-guard by you not knowing everything you should when I'm prepping you for interviews and the like. If you're curious about that, I'd say you should talk to the Director."

Well then, that raised some questions. Best not to pry right now though; he was probably telling the truth about not knowing anything. "Alright, I'll be sure to do that. That's all the questions I have right now."

"Cool. So typically, when a new cape joins up, we've got to balance their parahuman persona with their normal life. Making sure that their personality or appearance can't be used to make the connection between their personas, that kind of thing. With you though, we can skip a lot of that and get down to the PR. First things first, we've got to sort out your costume. From the rumors I heard, you do just fine fighting in that outfit, so I assume you'd prefer if we didn't change it that much?"

"I'd like that, yeah." I wasn't all that happy to be handing over total control of my appearance to someone else, but I had kind of resigned myself to it; self-expression wasn't nearly as important on Earth. I appreciated him giving me a say.

"We'll need to get you an actual mask, but that outfit is already pretty distinguishable from everybody else on the team in profile. Speaking of the mask, do you have any preferences for that?"

The mask wasn't something I had really considered; my hood had been serving just as well since I'd gotten here, but if I ended up in a fight more hectic than the one against the twin giants then there was still a chance of it coming undone. To be honest, I still didn't see the point in covering my face at all, considering that I didn't have people to hide behind a civilian identity, and I'd be gone in a few months anyway, but everybody else had just been taking it for granted so I'd decided to roll with it.

"There is one thing… Back home, Huntsmen and Huntresses have unique symbols that make them recognizable. If I drew up mine, could you design a mask based on that pattern?"

He smiled. "I think we can manage that. If you want to draw that up while we talk, I should be able to get it worked into something in time for your press reveal."

I nodded, and he opened a drawer on his desk, removing a box of colored pencils and a pad of paper. I wasn't a professional artist, but this was a symbol I had drawn thousands of times before. Everyone's symbol held personal meaning on Remnant; it was almost sacred. As a tradition, they were symbols of the creativity and self-expression that Huntsmen held in such high regard. I had created mine during my time at Signal Academy, then changed it a little bit after Salem's fall. A stylized rose, to represent my name and my Semblance, traced with lines of silver to represent the power that had defeated the Grimm once and for all.

I started to draw, and Shane continued to talk. We discussed some of the slight changes that would need to be made to my uniform, slimming it down. While my power could affect pretty much anything I was wearing, several of the villains in this city could take advantage of loose clothing. Personally, I was pretty sure my Aura would keep that from happening, but after Shane told me about some of these people's powers I could see why they wouldn't want to take the risk. I managed to keep him from removing my cloak though; I could drop it in a hurry if it became a problem, and he accepted my argument that the color would make me more distinctive.

We wrapped up the discussion on my costume as another knock came from the door; after a moment, I recognized the silhouette of Resource Management Guy through the glass before I stepped to the side. Shane spoke up, "Ah, looks like your room's ready now. I'll just give you one more thing to think about, and you can tell me what you think tomorrow. What's your name going to be? What's the public going to see you as? We came up with some ideas that you can look over, and I might come up with more once I've seen your testing, but I'll give you some time to figure out some of your own. Now there's no guarantee we'll use one you give us, but sometimes you'll come up with one we haven't."

Right, I've gotta make my secret identity! Or, well, I guess my non-secret identity. Whichever. "I'll make sure to do that. I'm supposed to get a… something that will let people send me messages, right? You can send me the list as soon as someone shows me how to use it?"

He nodded. "I'll do that. We should speak again tomorrow, I'll see you then."

We shook hands, and I turned to leave.

"Uh, Ruby? Your hood?"

Oh right. "Thanks!" I pulled it over my head once more and left the room.

* * *

 **Hello again! I managed to get this one done in time, but by the looks of things I've found my limit. I'm probably not going to be exceeding a chapter every three weeks for the foreseeable future. School has started back for me a well, so that will probably slow me down a bit too. I'm gonna call the next chapter for September 14th at the latest, while seeing if I can get it done sooner while juggling school at the same time.**

 **A slightly shorter chapter this time; only partially caused by the short time limit. Not a huge amount of plot development, I know, but it sets some things up for the future. The next chapter will likely be a bit longer than normal, and then we'll have a pair of interludes to wrap up the arc.**

 **See y'all next time!**


	5. Seed 1-5

**Seed 1.5**

I woke up the next morning on an uncovered mattress in my new, very spartan bedroom. Grey walls, gray desk, gray bedframe, gray shelves. Nothing you'd ever see on Remnant.

Ah well. I could deal with it long enough to get out of here.

I'd been left here last night with toiletries and a few changes of clothes, and been told that someone would come get me in the morning. For the time being though, they probably wouldn't be happy with me just wandering around the base, so I'd be staying in here. I showered and changed, and looking like I just robbed a gift shop I had to figure out what to do next.

Crescent Rose was still gone, so I couldn't run her maintenance yet. An investigation of the desk drawers revealed nothing but typical office supplies and a calendar, which raised even more questions. Why would the names of the months be the same, but the days of the week be different? They were close enough to be recognizable, but the changes threw me off kilter. Taiday became Tuesday, Figday became Friday; it made for yet another reminder of just where I wasn't.

I got saved from trying to redirect that train of thought by a knock on the door. I put on the hood, then opened it up to find Challenger, somehow giving off an impression of cheerfulness despite his featureless silver mask.

"Hey there, everything been going alright?"

Gotta be careful with questions like this. Let's see… yeah, he knows everything. "I've been better, still getting used to all this. I think all of… this is starting to hit me."

He hummed. "All us Protectorate members get looked at by a psychologist every so often to make sure we're staying, y'know, sane? The Director could probably set you up with a session ahead of schedule if you asked."

...Huh. That wouldn't be my first time with a psychologist - Jaune spent a lot of time convincing me to visit one during our stay in Haven - but it wasn't something I'd considered here. I hummed, then grinned, shaking off the negativity. "Anyway, enough of all that, what've I got for today?"

He looked at me for a second. I got the impression he was about to say something, but changed his mind at the last moment. He spoke for real a moment later; "First thing on your schedule is power testing. You probably know what your limits are, but the PRT likes to have hard numbers for things."

We started walking again, turning right and heading back for the elevators. He continued; "This won't be in-depth though, it's just a preliminary. There'll be a more complex one in the future."

We kept walking, discussing the specifics of what would be involved. Challenger's own initial testing was different from what mine would be because of the differences in our powers, but he was able to give me a general idea.

We traveled down an elevator, and left it to find an open cube, twenty or thirty yards to a side. The floor was taken up by gym equipment, a boxing ring, and a shooting range - if it hadn't been for the upper floors, it would have looked like a normal gym. Above all of that though, things were different. Multiple levels of catwalks rose up to the ceiling, plus a bunch of metal hoops welded to the wall and a ropes course up near the top.

Armsmaster was waiting for us as we entered, wearing an odd combination of his helmet and visor above typical gym attire, his halberd somehow balanced on one end as he leaned against it. Behind him, I saw a group of people in lab coats in a room mounted halfway up the back wall.

Armsmaster spoke: "Thank you for meeting me here. The technicians aren't cleared on your identity, so we'll be calling you Scythe until your name gets decided. Does that work for you?"

I nodded. "Yep! So… what should I do first?"

A new voice suddenly filled the room. "First thing would be to tell us what exactly you can do. We've got to know what we're testing for before we test you on it. In detail, please." It took me a moment to realize that the speaker was one of the people in the upper room.

"Okay. Uh, well, the most important thing would be my Aura. It's sort of like a forcefield that sits a couple inches away from my skin, but I can stretch it away from me if I need to. I can also tell when something's about to hit it if I need to dodge or block the hit."

"Does that work if you don't know the attacker is there?" That was Armsmaster.

"Yeah? If anything's about to damage my Aura, I just sort of know where it's going to hit and sort of how much damage it would do. So if somebody's about to shoot me, I can move my scythe so it's in the path of the bullet, or I can use my other power on the part of me that's about to get hit so the bullet just goes through me."

"Combat precog, plus a forcefield. That'd be pretty powerful on its own, but you have other powers on top of that?" Back to the lab coats.

"Yeah. This one might be easier to just show you though."

Armsmaster nodded and stepped back. I heard Challenger do the same behind me. Once they'd stepped back, I scattered, then shot upward, reforming in a three-point-stance on one of the catwalks before launching forward again. I canceled out my momentum and launched in a different direction, making a sharp right angle in an instant, phasing around a railing in the process and crossing the gap to the next platform over.

From there, I scattered again and fell through the floor, dropping to the middle of an intersection on the lower level. I spread my Aura, shooting off a cloud of petals in each direction. Each of the decoys stopped a few yards away from the center, as my Aura stretched to its limit. If this had been an actual fight, I wouldn't have risked spreading my defenses so thinly, but it worked for stuff like this.

I stayed there for a second, then snapped to the location of one of the decoys. The other three disappeared behind me as I zipped off again. I finished it off by flying a bunch of quick circles in the empty air, slowly floating down as I stretched my aura again, reappearing on the ground instead of visibly moving down. I rematerialized in the three-point pose that you saw in just about every comic book ever.

It struck me that being on a team with Weiss for so many years had apparently made it way easier to show off.

I looked up to find Challenger clapping, the technicians buzzing around in their room... and Armsmaster simply staring, body language unreadable.

A new voice came through the speakers; "Preemptive ratings are going to be mid-brute, mid-thinker, mid-breaker, mid-mover, low-stranger. Armsmaster, anything to add from down there?"

"We should test the exact strength of your… Aura," he responded, "but the other ratings should be adequate for the moment. Before we do that, are there any weaknesses we should know about? I'd rather not accidentally hurt you." He grabbed his halberd and spun it as it reconfigured into a sphere, snapping out on the end of a piston.

I gulped.

* * *

"Ooooowww," I complained, recovering from another hit. my Scroll wasn't working without access to the CCT, so apparently, the only way they could test the strength of my field was by having Armsmaster hit me over and over again and see how much damage I took. At least I'd been able to dodge when they were testing my reaction time.

"Where are you at now?" His voice had been getting more and more exasperated since we started. He'd started out light, and been gradually increasing in power with each hit. At first, they hadn't been much worse than a good punch, but that one was pretty close in force to a particularly large bullet.

"That one did some damage. Feels like I'm down around a quarter of my total?" Luckily, I was able to get a rough sense of how much I had left.

Armsmaster addressed the techs; "Down from a third. That should be all we need, then. Mark Scythe down as a Brute four, Thinker four, and we should be done for now."

Finally! Aura made sure I wasn't being seriously hurt by any of that, but it didn't exactly make it fun, either.

"So we're done here, then?" I asked the room.

Armsmaster turned to face me. "For now. We'll be going more in-depth in the future, but right now I believe you have a call waiting." He tilted his halberd in the direction of Challenger, who was walking up to us.

"Yep, Dragon's waiting upstairs. You ready to go?"

* * *

"Hello Ruby," came a voice from the terminal. A woman's face appeared a moment later. You could tell it was fake, but it still moved like it was real.

"Hello. You're Dragon, I guess?"

The face on the terminal smiled. "Yes, that would be me. I'm the Tinker that has access to Professor Haywire's technology."

Ah! That would explain it. "So you can get me back home?"

Her smile changed. It seemed a little more forced now. "It's… a little more complicated than that, I'm afraid. Unlike most Tinkers, I can understand how Haywire's technology worked, but that doesn't help us on the legal side of things."

"Legal side? What does that mean?"

Dragon responded, "You've heard about our contact with Earth Aleph, right?" I nodded, and she continued. "Well, when Haywire first punched the hole, both sides were worried about a war. The temptation of an entire planet full of resources might have eventually spilled over for one side or the other, and no matter which side ended up winning it wouldn't be pretty. They ended up stuffing the hole full of concrete from both sides, to try and keep anyone from ever crossing over again."

"Okay, I get why that could be a problem, but what does that have to do with me? Can't you just do the same thing with a portal back to Remnant?"

"We could…" Her face fell, "if we were allowed to open one in the first place. Since the hole got filled, it became illegal to travel, contact, or otherwise interfere with parallel worlds."

What? That doesn't… Couldn't she just?

Dragon must've seen my rising panic, and she spoke up before I could come up with a response. "No Ruby, it's alright! It's not hopeless yet. It's possible that we could get the law changed, but even if we manage it…" She trailed off.

"It's going to take a while."

"Exactly. I'm sorry, Ruby, but that's just the best I can do."

Okay. I was gonna need to decorate my room at some point. That probably shouldn't have been my first thought, but it was easier to focus on that than anything else. Still, it wasn't as bad as it could have been! I was still getting home, I'd just have to stick around for…

"How long do you think that's going to take?"

"...I truly am sorry Ruby, but I'm going to be honest with you. I can't say for sure. It could be months, it could be years, or it might not work at all."

Right. Okay, this will be fine. I can deal with this. I'm still gonna be helping people, that's what's really important, right?

When I didn't respond, Dragon continued. "I'll keep you apprised of my progress if you'd like."

I nodded. "Yeah, that'd be good. Thanks, Dragon." I paused for a moment. "Did you need anything else?"

Her expression settled back to a small smile. "No, that's all for now. I'll probably contact you again in the future to discuss your weapon - I have some questions about those 'Dust rounds' - but I'll let you get settled in your position before we get into that."

We said our goodbyes, and I turned to reopen the door. Challenger was waiting outside once again.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

Not great. "Well, I might be staying here for longer than I thought. Turns out it's against the law to go to parallel worlds, so I'm stuck here until it's not."

He didn't respond at first. We kept walking, and as we reached the elevator he finally spoke up; "This is kind've outside my area of expertise, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry"

"Eh, it's not your fault, I'm fine. Got other stuff to think about right now, anyway. It's time for me to meet everybody that I haven't yet, right?"

He looked at me again, tilting his head to one side. "Yeah, that's right. You've got a few hours until your clearance comes through and we can start briefing you on everything, so until then you'll be meeting the teams."

"Perfect!" He was still giving me that odd look. Couldn't he see I was fine? "Is there anybody I should watch out for?"

* * *

"No, wait, go back. How'd he get away with calling himself Clockblocker?" We were both laughing by now.

"He - whew - he managed to trick the PR gang. They decided on the name Stopwatch, then he convinced them to let him give the name to the media during his introduction."

Hah! Yang is gonna love hearing about this kid. "He's gonna be someone to watch out for, isn't he?"

"It wouldn't surprise me. Last time a Ward joined, he acted like he was going to shake their hand, then froze them mid-shake., She's hated him ever since."

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened a minute later. Assault was waiting on the other side, along with a handful of others. Two were women, one in a bodysuit covered in softly glowing lines and the other in military camouflage with a colorful scarf and sash. The remaining two were men, one costumed in skintight red with racing stripes and the other wearing stylized plate armor with brightly glowing boots. I gave that last one a double-take; his armor looked Mistrali, almost like the pictures you'd see in museums of one of their footsoldiers in the Great War, but older, fancier, less practical. It wasn't the best of connotations.

The flashbang-bright glowing boots and the cartoonishly tiny shield kind of broke the effect though.

The camouflaged woman stepped forward. She was the only one here that was obviously armed, at a glance. "Welcome to Protectorate HQ, ah…"

Challenger spoke up behind me. "Scythe, until we finalize an actual name. Are the Wards not coming?"

Mistral-guy answered, "Still in school right now, they'll be out in time for the inauguration." He moved a step away from the group. "From what I heard, you're not going to know who we are just by sight, so…" His posture shifted into what I'm sure was meant to be an impressive defensive stance. It got a little cooler when the forcefield bubble snapped into place around him, crackling and sparking where it met the floor.

"You can call me Dauntless." His voice had gotten deeper too. The whole performance would have seemed impressive when I was younger, but now it just felt condescending.

They weren't all that way, though. The military woman gave a more subtle demonstration of her power, the pistol at her hip dematerializing into a glowy green-black cloud, and reformed as a knife on the other side as she shot a quick glare at Dauntless. "I'm Miss Militia, these are Velocity, Battery, and you already know Assault," she said, gesturing first at the man in the racing stripes, then the woman with the glowing lines. Velocity waved and Battery nodded.

Assault glanced in their direction, then shot me a finger-gun.

"And I'm… I guess Scythe, for now." This codename stuff was going to get on my nerves. "That should change pretty soon, I guess." Nobody talked for a second. Dang it Ruby, you let the conversation trail off again!

"Why Scythe?" That was Battery, breaking the awkward silence from over in the corner. I liked her already.

"Well, I didn't exactly choose it. I actually don't know who started it, but it's because of my weapon. I… guess Armsmaster still has it. I haven't had a chance to get it back since he looked it over." I'd better get her back in one piece, or we were gonna have a problem.

"That's not surprising." Miss Militia again. "Piggot has everyone burning the candle at both ends to get you inducted ASAP - something about publicly announcing you before any of the higher-ups can do anything about it. I can't say I know what this is all about, but it's caused some confusion either way. Worst case scenario, you get it back once everything has calmed down. I am surprised that a name hasn't been finalized yet though - do you have one in mind?"

Shane had asked that question too, and it was a hard one. Names were really important, so even before I knew I'd be stuck here I'd known that this would take some thought. However, after sleeping on it and exercising my Semblance during testing it came to me. I'd always used the word 'scatter' in relation to my power. I never really thought about why; maybe I was somehow linking my Semblance to my mother's, connecting it to the text on her gravestone; but whatever the case, it simply felt right to call it that. The name needed to reference that, and to be honest, the word didn't need to change that much to work.

"I'm thinking… Scatter."

* * *

 **Alright guys, I've gotta apologize here. I realize it's only a day late, but it really annoys me that, even with another slightly shorter chapter than normal, I messed this up. School's started back, and the last week or so has been busier than I expected, so I didn't plan well enough. On the other hand, I can hopefully channel that frustration into writing more in the future, so we'll see how that goes.**

 **In more positive news, we're through the standard chapters for Arc 1! I've got interludes lined up for the next two chapters, so you should be seeing things from Piggot's perspective next time. Speaking of which, I'm going to plan out my writing better this time now that I have some idea of what I'm doing, so you should see that chapter on October 12th.**

 **I'll hopefully see you then!**


	6. Seed 1-i

**Seed 1.i**

The door to her office closed, and Director Emily Piggot leaned back in her seat. Of all the cities she could have... complicated, Ruby Rose had to show up in Brockton Bay.

Not that that was entirely a bad thing. She had Challenger making a recruitment speech, after all. This city needed more capes, no matter what the other directors claimed. The relative peace of the last several months was just the calm before the storm, and another Protectorate member was always a great help - especially with Challenger's upcoming transfer, and especially when that new hero was as powerful as this one seemed to be. Fenja and Menja weren't pushovers, and not only had Rose held her own against the pair of them simultaneously for as long as twenty minutes, but she had even driven them into retreat. The timing of her appearance could not have been more perfect.

That being said, this was hardly a typical recruitment attempt. Even ignoring the girl's extradimensional origin, she carried a scythe that was bigger than she was, and if the Twins' injuries said anything, then it was exactly as deadly as it looked. That was not a view that the public would appreciate.

Her origin made the whole situation even more complicated.

She picked up the phone and dialed, double-checking the unfamiliar number before confirming the call. This wasn't someone that she dialed often.

"Hello? This is Piggot, I believe the chief director is expecting my call. M/S code: goliard, nine-five, multifid."

There was a click in response, then a voice. "What do you have for me?"

Straight to the point, as was usual. "If she's to be believed, I don't think we have anything to fear from a large-scale invasion, though we may see others coming through. Apparently, she was brought here by an opponent of hers, who used a portal-spawning power to send her here after beating her in a fight."

"Can you confirm that she's telling the truth?" ...Was that hesitation? It wasn't much, a pause just a fraction of a second longer than normal, but it said quite a bit coming from Costa-Brown.

"Armsmaster carries a lie detector as a standard part of his equipment, he would have alerted me if any part of her story set it off. He did leave the room during the conversation, but I'll have him go over my office recording to see if he can find anything. He's currently looking at her technology, confirming that it actually is extradimensional."

"Make sure that he does," the director responded. "I don't have to tell you how important this is."

"Yes, ma'am."

"One more thing. Alexandria will be paying Brockton Bay a visit the day after tomorrow. She has orders to speak with Miss Rose and obtain more information than she's been willing to give us previously."

That was not good news. Piggot wanted that information as well, but if one of the most powerful capes in the Protectorate wanted to talk to Rose, it would save time to simply use a video call. If she was coming here herself, then she had another motive in mind, one presumably involving Ruby. The best case scenario would be Rose being shipped off to some other city - and in the worst case, she'd be kept away from the public entirely, no help to anyone.

 _I might not be particularly fond of capes, but I'm not stupid enough to think that this country doesn't need all the heroes it can get._

Still, it wouldn't do to complain about that to her superior. She'd have to fight this more indirectly. "Understood ma'am. I take it that Rose shouldn't find out about this?"

"I believe Alexandria would prefer she didn't. Now, unless there's anything else?"

"I do have one more question." It wasn't likely this would change anything, but it was worth it to try. "Has there been any change with Challenger?"

"I'm afraid not. His transfer is still in-process. Brockton's been quiet for the past few months, Boston needs him more than you do."

"That won't be true for long. We caught Kaiser's bodyguards today, so the Empire's as weak as it's ever been. Someone is going to take advantage, and it's going to happen soon."

"Even if you knew that for certain - which you don't, considering what I know of Kaiser's diplomatic skill - it hasn't happened yet. Emily, Boston is in an uproar, and the way things are going now they're going to need a new face on the team permanently."

Piggot sighed inaudibly. "Understood. If you'll excuse me, I have preparations to make."

"Of course." The call clicked off, and she set it back on its base.

Piggot stayed where she was for a moment, thinking. Challenger was one of the more powerful capes on her roster, and she would prefer not to lose him. Normally, the way this situation had progressed, she'd be out of luck. Rose's appearance, however, had given her more options.

She reached for the intercom. "Tell Renick that I need him in my office, ASAP."

Deputy Director Bruce Renick entered a few minutes later. She'd originally chosen the man for personal reasons, to balance out what she saw as her own flaws, but over the years he had shown a great deal of talent when it came to the fine details of navigating the PRT's bureaucracy.

"Alexandria will be paying us a visit in two days, and I think it's likely that she intends to poach Rose from us," she told him, not wasting their limited time with pleasantries.

Renick responded immediately, "I take it you have a plan?"

"Yes. If we introduce and endear the girl to Brockton Bay's public before any transfer goes through, then Costa-Brown won't be able to move her without kicking up a fuss with the public. She doesn't want that kind of PR, so she should be forced to keep her here."

Renick winced. "It won't be easy on that timescale." That much was obvious. What the Triumvirate lacked in official authority, they more than made up for in influence. Theoretically, a PRT director outranked them, but few had the clout to tell the strongest heroes in the world no. "We don't even know that she plans to enlist yet."

"Then we need to hurry. Challenger should still have his earpiece in; I'm going to have him speed up the recruitment pitch and get her onboard. You get all relevant departments into gear - I want her inducted by the end of tomorrow and introduced to the media the following morning - before Alexandria arrives. Use your best judgment to decide who needs to know her origin, but keep it tight and have anyone that's not cleared for secret identities sign NDAs."

He nodded. "Yes, Ma'am."

As he left the room, Piggot took a breath, then reached for the phone once again. Things were about to get busy around here.

* * *

"We're going to need a plan for her weapon," Armsmaster spoke.

It had been sixteen hours since Rose had first made her appearance, the girl herself asleep in her temporary quarters. Armsmaster and Shane Lynch were standing in Piggot's office, and the three were in the midst of an update on Ruby's induction. Armsmaster was in full costume, sans the helmet sitting on his chair, and Lynch was wearing the same suit he had been yesterday, likely not having had time to go home and change.

Lynch's brow furrowed. "That was another thing I wanted to discuss with you both. I just saw the recording a couple hours ago, and that scythe could cause some problems with the public if it's not done right."

Piggot spoke up, "Armsmaster, you analyzed it, what can you tell us?"

Armsmaster paused for a moment, then started speaking evenly; "Scatter made her first appearance carrying a very large scythe. It's taller and longer than she is, sharp enough to bite through titanium and contains what I suspect to be a small railgun built into the staff. It's also capable of collapsing down on itself into a more portable form not much bigger than a large briefcase. It's Tinkertech, and it's obviously deadly enough that I cannot recommend allowing her to carry it around on day-to-day patrols."

Shane glanced up toward the ceiling in thought. "Alright, we can work around that. We can keep her from carrying it on her patrols, but if what I've heard from security she might not be pleased."

"We'll need to make a choice between her preferences and the public's safety. It seems like the choice is clear."

Piggot chose that moment to interject. None of them had gotten sleep last night. "Lynch, you're right that she won't need it from day-to-day, but if losing it would cause friction then we can find a compromise. Armsmaster, could the blade be blunted without disturbing its other functions?"

His reply came a moment later. "...I believe so."

"That should do nicely then. Blunt the blade, make it clear that it has been blunted, and then confiscate the ammunition for use during S- and A-class emergencies. Does everyone find that acceptable?"

Lynch and Armsmaster shared a glance.

"...I don't see a problem with that."

Armsmaster merely nodded.

* * *

"What!? Why?"

Piggot supposed she should have expected that reaction. The girl had been loath to give up her weapon even temporarily, she couldn't possibly have been pleased to learn that it would be different when she got it back. She heard the clicking of Armsmaster shifting position behind her, in reaction to the outburst.

"The public wouldn't be pleased to see one of their heroes carrying obviously lethal weaponry outside of an active fight. You can still use it, it will just be easier to keep from killing anyone."

Was that offense on her face? "I've never killed anyone with Crescent Rose that didn-" She paused, just for a second, as she seemed to rethink her words. "That I didn't mean to." What had she been going to say? Didn't what? Ruby continued, "I've been using her since I was thirteen years old, I know what I'm doing!"

"That might be the case, but the public doesn't know that, and will have no reason to believe it. Your origin is classified, and no one's going to believe that you managed to learn to do that if they've never heard of you before. We're introducing you as someone who very recently received and started using her powers, so why and how would you have learned to use a weapon like that before gaining them?"

"But that's true! I didn't find my Semblance until almost a year after building Crescent Rose."

She built and used this weapon before gaining powers? At that age? "That might be true, but people won't believe that here. You aren't on your own world anymore, and from what you've told us so far, the rules on Remnant are different. No Earth twelve-year-old could ever possibly build or operate a weapon like that with no powers." She didn't truly believe that it was possible on Remnant either, but that was beside the point.

Scatter was about to object again, but Piggot didn't have time to bother with debating this. She continued, "You're missing context. Parahumans are still new to our world - people aren't used to them. As far as the public is concerned, heroes and villains are curiosities. Perhaps they can be frightening, but the average citizen doesn't consider the average cape to be a serious threat to their wellbeing - at least until that cape is standing in front of them." Scatter gave the most incredulous look there, and was about to say something before Piggot cut her off: "If the heroes start carrying around weapons like that," she gestured at the item in question, "on simple patrols, then people will begin to wonder what we are expecting to fight that makes a weapon like that necessary."

That gave the girl pause. She spoke, almost under her breath, "and we don't want to cause a panic." She gave Piggot a look, as if searching for something in her expression. After a moment, she clenched a fist and looked her in the eyes.

"Alright, I can use non-lethal ammo, but I'm not going to blunt Crescent Rose. There are people out there who I will need that edge to stand against, and not having it in the field could get me, or my teammates, killed."

That was an excellent attitude, and one that she would have been glad to have on the team if it weren't for the reason for this entire conversation. The problem wasn't solved entirely yet, but this was better than before.

"That only solves half the problem."

Scatter's eyes widened, and she grinned wide. "Actually, I think I have a better idea." She reached across the desk, sending large, colorful cartridges rolling across the bench. Grabbing a yellow one, she set to work extricating the bullet from its casing, then closed her fist around the inch-and-a-half long crystal. "I'll need some time to figure out how to manage it though, so can we wait until I have a chance to put it together? Oh, and I might need some of Armsmaster's help to do it."

"I suppose that's reasonable, if Armsmaster agrees?" She turned the sentence into a question, glancing over at the man across the workbench. He didn't look pleased, but he nodded his assent.

"I'll do what I'm able." He looked to Rose, "Keep in mind that I will only have so much time to dedicate to this."

Rose nodded, seemingly lost in thought as she stared at the crystal.

* * *

"Everyone, final reports?"

Piggot entered the conference room, where the heads of each department were seated around a table. Armsmaster, wearing his armor, stood with his back to the right wall.

Lynch spoke up first. "It's been a hectic couple of days, but we should be good to go. Her costume's been prepped, and it should fit well enough until we get the chance to make the final alterations."

So far, so good. "I assume we've picked a name?"

He nodded. "She chose 'Scatter.' It fits her powers, but not so much it gives anything away, and it's marketable."

"That will do. Is everything settled with the media?"

Pattie Moss, head of Public Relations, answered that one. "Yep! We'll be live at ten-fifteen tomorrow, interviews have been scheduled, speeches have been written, and my internet people have been told what questions they can and can't answer. Everything should be ready for the big day!"

"Excellent work, Pattie." The woman beamed as Piggot looked towards another head. "What about her induction?"

It was Renick who spoke up now from the other side of the table. "The paperwork is being filed, but we can't control how fast it moves once it leaves the building. I'm doing what I can, but I doubt she'll be a full, legal member by tomorrow."

That wasn't optimal, but it shouldn't cause major problems. This department had almost fully enlisted a new cape less than two days after her first appearance in the city - that was impressive enough to be worthy of praise, even if not every detail was finalized in that timeframe. "That shouldn't be too much of a problem. Right now, the important thing is that the public knows that she's here, and all going according to plan, they will know that tomorrow."

There were sounds of agreement around the table.

"Alright then. Renick, as soon as she's official, work with Armsmaster to slot her into patrol schedules. Everybody go home, get some rest. Good work."

* * *

"As you may recall from this past Sunday, Fenja and Menja of the Empire Eighty-Eight have been placed into custody."

Polite applause came from the audience.

The man at the podium in front of her continued, voice amplified to fill the room; "What you may not know is that there was a previously-unknown cape who was involved in the fight which led to these villains' capture."

Showmanship. Anybody who followed cape news was aware of that - some idiot civilian had decided to stay behind and record the fight, and his video had been making the rounds across internet boards, magazines, and tabloid news. Nonetheless, it was important. Her department had to build up the narrative, introduce new capes as if they were characters in a play.

"Today, we finally get the chance to introduce you to this new hero."

Try desperately to conceal the true extent of the threat that villains and even heroes posed.

"Brockton Bay: I'd like you to meet Scatter."

Piggot looked up, over the crowd. From her seat on the stage, she could see what the crowd couldn't as a silhouette disappeared from the top of the overhang. Everyone saw what came next though, as a wave of rose petals swept through the air above the crowd, crashing against the stage. A swirl of red, and there she stood, black and red costume topped by a smooth, ovoid mask.

Applause and cheers echoed through the room.

This was why her department had spent almost forty-eight straight hours working out how this reveal would happen. This city was going to need this morale boost in the very near future, and it was her job to ensure that it didn't lose faith.

She watched as Scatter gave the audience a demonstration of her powers, dashing from place to place around the podium and the stage. Classified material aside, she was practically perfect from a PR standpoint. A powerful, non-lethal ability that she used with a great deal of skill, combined with a relatable personality. With the possible exception of Challenger, no other member of the Protectorate had that combination naturally.

Her thoughts were interrupted by another round of applause as the demonstration finished and the girl stepped up to the microphone. A canned speech followed - one of a variety of 'fill-in-the-blank' style statements given to capes who weren't totally comfortable writing their own. They'd work her into the habit over time - relatable and confident weren't always synonymous.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the silenced buzzing of her phone in her pocket. Her people knew better than to message her during a media appearance unless it was an emergency. Surreptitiously checking it so the crowd couldn't see, she saw the reason for the urgency:

 _B. Renick_

 _Alexandria is in your office._

That was unexpected. She wasn't meant to arrive for several more hours. Doubtless, she saw the news broadcasts and decided to advance the schedule. It didn't really matter. Triumvirate member or not, she didn't have the authority to order her out of this mid-event.

She'd still make the trip back to her office quickly though. Rank aside, one did not keep the strongest woman in the world waiting for any longer than necessary.

"Director Piggot."

"Alexandria."

This was the first time that the pair of them had met in-person. They had met occasionally in the past, but that hadn't quite prepared her for the impact the woman could have when she wanted to. It seemed that the ability to fly at Mach 10, crack a city with a single punch, and ignore the explosion of a small nuclear bomb did a lot for one's presence.

Piggot waited for the woman to speak. She had already angered the cape enough, and Alexandria held an unfortunate amount of pull in the organization.

"I'm going to be meeting with your newest recruit later today. What can you tell me about her?"

Straight to business. That would make this easier. "She's eager, cheerful, but often seems to forget that she's lacking a great deal of context. She was a member of what seems to be her world's equivalent of the Protectorate, but the differences between the two realities are extreme enough that I expect some psychological difficulties."

"How extreme?"

Now here came the interesting part. "We don't know much yet, but what we have learned is... worrying. They have had parahumans for significantly longer than we have, and the organization that controls them seems to be much more regimented and militant than the Protectorate, thanks to an unknown period of time of at least several centuries spent defending against an endless army of fairytale monsters. They're more advanced than we are technologically, and each parahuman has a secondary set of effective defensive abilities that she referred to as Aura. If their world as a whole discovers - or has discovered - our own, I cannot imagine that we don't make a tempting target."

"If you believe that she is such a threat, why did you recruit her?"

"I doubt she intends any harm personally. She seems to genuinely want to help; Armsmaster has a lie detector built into his helmet, and it didn't detect any attempts to mislead us or hide anything, excepting her exact method of arrival."

At Alexandria's raised eyebrow, she continued, "She refused to give details, and I elected to let it be for that moment. From what she did tell us, a power-boosting Trump fell into the hands of a portal-maker, who then gained the ability to make portals through dimensions. Rose was sent here while attempting to retrieve the Trump, though the specifics are, apparently, classified."

Alexandria nodded, apparently satisfied. She spoke again, "Inform Scatter that I would like a meeting as soon as possible."

"Done. Is there anything else?"

"Yes, actually. Regarding Challenger's impending transfer to Boston."

Piggot had been hoping that she hadn't found out about that. "I've discussed the compromise with Director Armstrong, and he's amenable."

"I'm aware. I'd like to hear your reasoning."

"Boston already has a forcefielder in Bastion, giving them Challenger would be redundant. They don't, however, have an effective Mover, and Brockton Bay has just recruited a second speedster."

The woman seemed to consider that for a moment. Piggot knew capes, and this woman was probably not willing to do her any favors. She could perhaps be inclined to sabotage this if she didn't accept the justification.

Finally, she spoke up. "Fine. I'll recommend that the Chief Director approve the transfer." That seemed entirely too easy. "Contact Scatter, tell her to meet me in conference room six as soon as she's able."

With that, Alexandria left the room. Piggot could honestly say she hadn't expected that, but then it likely wasn't the end of this. The woman would be getting something out of this scenario; even without Scatter, she was smart enough to find something that worked out in her favor, and odds were it would come back to bite Piggot herself.

More complications.

* * *

 **"I'm going to plan out my writing better this time now that I have some idea of what I'm doing, so you should see that chapter on October 12th."**

 **So... yeah. That just didn't happen at all, did it? (He says, 197 days later.) Real life interrupted, and it seriously kicked me off the semi-flow I had going. Everything just kinda went to crap after that. To be quite honest, I'm not happy with this chapter (or this arc), but if I don't put it out now then I don't think I'm ever going to. I might come back and rewrite it in the future, but I need to get past it for the moment.**

 **Luckily, I already have the next chapter finished and partially edited, and work on the one after that has been started, so you can expect more updates in the very near future. The next one is a surprise interlude, and the one after that will kick off the next arc.**

 **Some canonicity stuff; Since the last chapter, Ward has become a thing, as has RWBY volume five. The former hasn't changed much in terms of the plotline (though the likely upcoming Boston Games arc will probably break some stuff I had planned), but the latter gave us some solid explanations on how Remnant works that break some of the assumptions I was working on for this fic. In general, assume that this is only totally canon-compliant for RWBY up through the end of V4. The events of volume five went... similarly, but with a few changes, most of which should be fairly apparent based on what's been brought up so far. Mechanics-wise, this story has more or less explained how Aura works for its purposes, and not much else has changed, so there shouldn't be major problems there.**

 **I think that's all I wanted to say here, so have some serious thanks for sticking around, and I'll see y'all next time!**

 **(Oh wait, one more thing: Literally everyone complained about the name Scatterer, so I went back and edited the last chapter to the much less terrible Scatter. Thank you all for the input!)**


	7. Seed 1-r

**Seed 1.r**

The greatsword came in from the left, the warscythe swept down from above. She rolled to the right, firing a shell towards the scythe-user. The recoil pushed her away, and she fired again as she came up, the shot detonating in the face of the boy running towards her. The explosion launched her back at greatsword kid, who brought up his weapon just in time to deflect her punch, being knocked back instead of out.

The fight paused, each combatant taking stock. Yang Xiao Long glanced over at the board, noting the Aura levels of herself and her opponents.

 _Team One:_

 _Yang Xiao Long - 77%_

 _Team SSAF:_

 _Spencer Olate - 65%_

 _Samantha Copper - 89%_

 _Azure Holland - 79%_

 _Jerome Foil - 81%_

Jerome had more aura remaining than she would have expected after that explosion. Was that just a big Aura pool, or a sign of his Semblance?

The fight resumed. Samantha, snapped a long, metallic whip towards her as Jerome threw one of his hammers from the other direction. Yang lept over them, firing her gauntlets beneath her as she flipped in mid-air, landing on top of the team's leader - the greatsword wielder who had tried to engage her single-handedly.

Spencer was overconfident. She'd seen his records, he had been at the top of his grade at Shelter, but he didn't seem to grasp that nearly everyone here was of his caliber, and many were even better. Beacon was the most prestigious academy on the planet, and with the downsizing of the Huntsmen after the fall of Salem, only the best of the best were being accepted - both as students and as teachers. The sooner he learned that he wasn't quite as invincible as he thought he was, the better off he'd be.

He jumped back, and the machine gun built into his crossguard fired. He was sent spinning with far more force than its size should have allowed. Yang stepped into his spin, blocking his attack and halting stopping him cold with a single upraised hand. As the blade slammed into her prosthetic arm and Spencer reeled, she felt the telltale flaring of Aura that signified an incoming attack, exactly as expected. A well-timed moment later, she ducked, letting Azure fly over her and accidentally tackle her team leader out of the arena. They hit the ground with a booming thud.

Azure was overeager. When Spencer tried to fight her single-handedly, Azure had come in from the other direction, inserting her help where it wasn't wanted. It had saved her leader from his own mistake, but it hadn't always worked out for her in the past - she had, in her third year at Signal, made major changes to the design of her weapon, trying to learn an entirely new fighting style in the middle of the year. Apparently, it was an attempt to imitate, of all people, Yang's own sister. When she had, eventually, thought through her decision, she had made another change to the design, ending up on a compromise between the original look and the new one. However, that was just one example of a long history of poorly-thought-through decisions that would hurt her when one went bad. She would need to learn to think through her actions if she was ever going to succeed.

Samantha and Jerome skidded to a stop. They exchanged glances, creating a new plan without ever speaking a word. Samantha snapped her whip again, which crackled and popped with electricity as Jerome started running off to the side as if trying to get past her. The ploy was clever - Make it seem as though Samantha is the distraction, so that she goes after Jerome instead, turning him into a momentary punching bag while his partner caught here from behind. Best to reward tactical thinking and teamwork. She didn't want to make it too easy for them though… a change in tactics should do the trick.

She ran for Jerome, collapsing her gauntlet back into bracelet form. As she ran, she checked the Aura gauge again: _54%_. Stopping that sword must have taken out a bigger chunk than she thought. Still, it wasn't much of a problem. As her target shifted, bracing for the impact, she tapped into her own Semblance. The air around her began to heat up, and in the corners of her vision, her hair began to glow. Her next step set off an explosion, and she was thrown into the air above him.

As she came down, his hammer went up, and she allowed it to connect with her leg, mostly to see what would happen. The face of the hammer exploded on impact, an energy field snapping up to shape the explosion away from him and into her. She rode it up and away, landing several feet to his left, then ducking into a roll as Copper's whip whistled over her head.

Jerome and Samantha were longtime friends, partners at Signal. The pair were strong, easily among the top of their class, especially when they were working together, but they didn't trust their new teammates. Yang knew for a fact that they could have stopped the other two from going over the edge if they'd wanted to. Instead, they decided to let them go, probably deciding that the other pair would only get in their way.

Yang was forced to redirect, extending the shotgun from her prosthetic and firing forward. She jerked backward just in time to avoid the whip, which had suddenly changed directions mid-air, and was now homing in on her, sparking all the way.

She expanded her gauntlet as well, launching herself toward Jerome, guessing that his partner wouldn't risk attacking with him in the line of fire. He swung down, and she ducked under his guard, leading into an exchange of a half-dozen attacks, parries, and counterattacks. A punch was followed by a shotgun blast, both of which were stopped by a last-second defensive barrier, but the sudden kicks to both of his sides went unpredicted and unblocked.

He swung again with both hammers, one swinging up, the other from the side, as she jumped, focusing more heat out of her Semblance to give her a bit more height as she landed on top of his weapon. Her other foot planted on his shoulder, she jumped off of him, spinning around to kick him in the head as she landed, blasting herself back in his direction.

Samantha, realizing that Jerome wouldn't be able to knock her away, took the initiative. The whip spun around her as she charged, ready to intercept any incoming attacks. Yang tried to keep Jerome between herself and the whip, but it seemed to snake around him with a mind of its own, lunging for her fast enough that she barely raised her prosthetic in time to block. _Perfect._ As the whip shifted, blades sliding down and biting into her, she suppressed her aura around the arm and began winding the whip around it.

It didn't take long for her opponent to realize what she was doing, and the whip started violently thrashing, the sparking increasing rapidly. At the same time, Jerome was recovering and preparing for a finishing blow. Yang felt her aura drop with every spark and struggled to keep the weapon contained as she tied it off. She needed to end this fast; it just wouldn't do for Beacon's newest professor to lose to a group of students, even students as exceptional as this year's latest crop.

She threw the gates of her Semblance wide open, seeming to explode as a fireball billowed around her. Both students were thrown off balance, Jerome was thrown away, and she lifted her arm, with the whip wrapped and knotted around it. Samantha recovered in time to realize what was going to happen, but could only sit and watch as the prosthetic disconnected from its base and launched away, carried out of the arena by a one-time Burn Dust booster, dragging the whip behind it. Yang looked back to see Samantha trying, with a look of panic, to remove the weapon from where it was wrapped around her wrist before it yanked her off her feet and sent her soaring out of the arena as well. The arm slammed into the wall, cracking the plaster and embedding itself halfway in. The whip coiled together and acted as a cushion for its wielder, who dropped back to the floor with all the poise she could muster and began the detangling process.

Jerome watched the exchange from where he stood, unable to intervene in time, then looked back to Yang. A glance at the aura meter seemed to confirm for him that yes, he was now alone. He took a resigned breath, raised his hammers defensively, and braced for the hit.

* * *

"Alright guys, nice work today. You're dismissed-" The crowd of students that had been watching the fights jumped up and started running out of the room "-and I expect improvement over the weekend! Practice with your teams!" She finished with a yell as the last student ran out, slamming the door shut.

"Damn Fridays." They left in enough of a hurry when it wasn't the last class before the weekend. It was only the first week! If she didn't know better, she'd almost think they were scared… of… her…

A platinum blonde woman with a riding crop flashed through her memory, and she shuddered. Turning around, she muttered to herself as she started walking; "I can't believe I'm turning into her. How did I ever get talked into taking this job?"

"If I'm not mistaken, it wasn't all that hard."

Yang turned once more, finding the owner of the voice standing in the doorway. Younger than her, barely older than the first-years that had just left, and yet among the most influential people in the kingdom. He looked… off.

"Y'know if you'd just fire me, I might be able to accomplish something for once." She'd never been one for decorum.

She had expected at least a chuckle from that. "You and I both know that you can do the most good from right here, Miss Xiao Long." His expression stayed as it was, slightly sad and vaguely familiar.

Her stump shifted as if to cross her arms before she realized what she was doing. She settled for a creased brow instead. "Alright Oscar, what's going on?"

Oscar's grip tightened around his cane. "I'm afraid that we have lost contact with your sister. As far as know, she is alive, but we do not know where she is."

Yang froze. She turned around, walked the last few steps to her destination, and slammed her fist against the wall. Her prosthetic fell into her grasp, and she reattached it, taking a deep breath. When she turned back, her eyes had changed, shifting away from their usual lavender into a shocking shade of red. "What happened?"

"Ms. Rose took-"

"Drop the act, Oz."

He blinked, startled at the nickname. He sighed. "Ruby took point on a group of Huntsmen investigating the loss of contact from the town of Leaston and its surrounding villages. Apparently, a tribe of bandits had brought down the local CCT booster tower, and Ruby found evidence of your mother's involvement."

Raven. Yang hadn't seen her mother since the Battle of Haven, and her feelings toward the woman had only soured with time.

Oscar continued, "The group tracked down the tribe, and captured or killed everyone in the camp. Raven herself was not present. According to one of the Huntsmen she was working with, Ruby sent the group away with the prisoners, staying behind herself. We can assume that she intended to find the missing relic without raising questions before Raven interrupted. One of the other Huntsmen heard the fighting and saw the last few seconds; it ended with Raven dragging Ruby through a portal, and neither of them has been seen since."

Yang didn't respond, processing this new information. When she started walking, pushing past Oscar and turning down the hall, he had to jog to keep up with her. He started to speak, but she cut him off.

"Who else knows what happened?"

"...You were the first person we've told, and the other Huntsmen have been… politely informed to keep quiet. I assume you'll be taking some leave?"

"Right now, I'm going to call my family and my team. The leave request will be on Glynda's desk-"

Yang stopped short. Oscar had smiled in such a way that Yang could see the boy's previous incarnation coming through, stronger than usual. If you asked her, that whole situation was still creepy. "You should move quickly. This will not stay quiet for long."

* * *

Yang sat in the Cross-Continental Transmit tower, newly repaired and back in working order now that the Wyvern was gone. She'd gone to a terminal on one of the lower floors, specifically reserved for VIPs to have private calls on high-speed lines.

Professorship did have its perks.

Dad would be in the middle of class, Qrow was off… somewhere, and JNPR was in Mistral on a mission, so it wasn't likely that any of them would pick up a direct call at the moment. She'd wait a few hours before trying to contact them.

The timing of this news wasn't entirely inconvenient, though. Blake would be done with work for the day in Menagerie, and Weiss would likely be in her office until later in the night. Normally she wouldn't disrupt the two, but this wasn't exactly a normal situation.

Yang dialed the team's group number, and Weiss picked up on the second ring. If her hair wasn't already stark white, Yang would have almost expected it to be going grey from the tone of her voice, despite the momentary cheerfulness. "Yang! It's so good to see you! How's the semester going?"

This wasn't going to be fun. "Hey, Weiss. The year's off to a decent start. The students are terrified of me, that's a good thing, right?"

Weiss responded, "Living up to Headmistress Goodwitch's example, I see." They both shared a light laugh.

"...Yang? What's going on?" Apparently, that was enough for Weiss to clue into the fact that something was wrong.

"Let's save it for when Blake gets here. It's best if we can all work-" She was interrupted by Blake's customized tone as the woman herself joined the call.

"Yang, Weiss. It's good to see you… both. What's wrong?"

Yang sighed. "Ruby's gone missing." Weiss' eyes went wide, and she covered her mouth with one hand as Blake's eyes narrowed and her ears flattened against her head. "Apparently, she fought my mom, who used the Relic of Knowledge to kidnap her."

There was a moment of stunned silence, with Weiss the first to recover. "Is she still alive?"

"I don't see why Raven would have taken her if she wasn't."

Weiss nodded, reaching out of view of the camera. She came back with a scroll and put it to her ear. "Klein? Ready my airship for launch as quickly as possible. I'll be flying to Beacon, followed by Menagerie, followed by…" She looked back to Yang.

"I don't know where they are. We're probably gonna be looking for a while."

"An extended voyage of unknown duration. Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you, Klein."

Blake had muted her side of the call, getting her own preparations ready. Yang was struck by the thought that, with a single CCT call, her team was willing to drop everything they were doing - the largest Dust company on the planet, the biggest Faunus rights movement in history, both left in the hands of others because their teammate was in trouble.

Blake spoke up, "My father will be taking over the White Fang during my absence. Who else are we bringing with us?"

Yang responded, "I'll be calling my Dad and Uncle as soon as we're done here, and Team Juniper if I can get ahold of them, but otherwise this is being kept as quiet as it can be. We don't want the masses getting involved in this if we don't have to, especially if there's a Relic involved." They both understood the need for secrecy here. If word of the Relic's power began to spread, it could trigger another Great War.

Weiss spoke up next, "What are we going to do once we've found them? It's not like we can force Raven to do what we want her to."

Both teammates looking to her as the leader in Ruby's absence. How in the world had that happened?

"Don't worry, I've got a couple ideas. Weiss, I've got someone up in Atlas that I'd like to call in a favor from, do you think you could handle that for me?"

Weiss thought for a moment. "I suppose you mean Eira? I can have someone track her down, but it might take a while."

"That's alright. Have them tell her to call us when she gets the chance to do so and to stay within easy reach for the next few weeks. We might need to stop by and pick her up. Blake, our contacts in Vacuo are pretty thin, can you ask Sun to lay out some feelers, see if there have been any strange women coming through portals? Tell him what's going on if you need to, but make sure he knows to keep it quiet."

Blake nodded her assent. "I'll need to go make preparations. Weiss, how long until your ship arrives?"

"I'll be about a week, unless… Yang, Juniper are in Mistral at the moment, aren't they? I can pick up you and your family, we meet Blake halfway at Haven Academy, find Juniper while we're there, and then begin the hunt."

"That sounds good to me. Blake, how fast can you get to Mistral?"

"Fast enough. I'll see you there." Blake ended her end of the call.

Weiss looked to Yang. "I'll see you in three days. We're going to find her, Yang."

Yang smiled, but she knew Weiss could see through her facade. Finding her wasn't the problem, anyway. Raven would turn up eventually, she couldn't not. The real issue… well.

"Yeah, I know we'll find her. I'm just worried about what happens when we do."

* * *

 **Hello again! I actually meant to post this yesterday, but it slipped my mind. We've got a Yang Interlude! Yangterlude? Eh. Interludes from Remnant's perspective will probably come at the end of each arc (or at least every other arc, depending on which path I take this plotline down.)**

 **Next chapter is in progress, I'm gonna try for the end of the month, but no promises. See you then!**


	8. Roots 2-1

**Roots 2.1**

That was a _lot_ of cameras.

I was standing up near the ceiling of the PRT's press conference room. They had a platform bolted to the back wall next to the tech booth, I guess for introductions just like this one, and I was able to see every one of the dozens of cameras, microphones, and reporters between the stage and myself.

" _...previously unknown cape…_ "

We'd only had time to practice this once, what if it all came apart? Some of those cameras were broadcasting live!

" _...introduce you to this new hero._ "

One of the techs got my attention with a wave and pantomimed a deep breath, before gesturing toward the crowd and touching her finger and thumb together. I couldn't quite figure out what she meant, but I got the intent. I smiled at her before realizing that she couldn't see my mouth through my new mask, and nodded after a few seconds instead.

One more thing to get used to, I guess.

" _Brockton Bay: I'd like you to meet Scatter._ "

Heart pounding, I scattered, spreading out in a wave a lot like the one I used against Fenja and Menja. Cameras turned up towards me as I swept down over the crowd, crashing against the stage and rematerializing. Now was… right, just showing off my Semblance. Simple enough. I did it in the lab, I could do it again here. Some simple dashing around, a quick flight straight up and a teleport straight down. Enough to get people interested without giving too much away. Hopefully, anyway.

And now we had the speech. I didn't have to write it, thankfully. Someone in the tangled mess that I had apparently made of the PRT's bureaucracy must have had pity on me.

"Hello everyone. Like you've just heard, I'm Scatter."

Polite applause echoed through the room… but not as much as I was expecting there to be.

"Like you just saw, my powers let me turn into that super-fast cloud of rose petals, with… a few other tricks as well."

I had run into a lot of reporters over the years, and by now it wasn't hard to read them. There were a couple who probably hadn't been reporting for more than a couple of years, and they watched with interest, but most of the rest just seemed to be doing their jobs, like this situation was an everyday thing to them.

It was a little bizarre, to be honest.

The script suggested a smile here, and even though they couldn't see my mouth I did anyway. "For the power geeks in the audience, I'm rated as a Breaker/Mover 5, Stranger 2... among a few others." There were a few chuckles at that, mostly from the newer journalists. "I was able to take down the Empire's twins with the Protectorate's help, and in the very near future we'll be catching a few more bad guys for you."

Apparently, that didn't actually refer to any mission that had been planned, it was just meant as a general reassurance that we were still protecting people. That kind of statement wasn't uncommon when Huntsmen had to speak to the public back home, but the Protectorate seemed to operate in the public eye much more often than Huntsmen ever did. Shouldn't it be more obvious here?

The woman who had first introduced me stepped back up. "We'll be taking a few questions now. Let's start with you." She pointed at one of the newer people in the room. This was the part that I'd been drilled the most on, even if it still wasn't that much. They'd written up guidelines for how to answer certain questions that might be asked, and advised that I deflect and avoid any questions that they didn't predict.

"Bonnie Nichols, from _The Northeast Sentinel_. Watching the video that's been making the rounds online, it's pretty obvious you've got some experience in fighting. Have you ever operated as a cape before?"

I half-recognized this paper from reading articles on my first day here. If I remembered right, they focused on capes, so it wasn't too surprising that they'd picked up on that. "I'm sorry, but I'll need to skip that question, and any others about my background." Watching her face fall, I added, "I... will confirm that I do have some combat experience, yes." Someone might get upset with me over that. I hadn't really told her anything she didn't already know, though, so that shouldn't matter that much, right?

She smiled, sat back down, and another reporter was called on. "Guy Wolfe, _Bay Times_. It's wonderful to meet you, Scatter. Speaking of the video - it shows you carrying a very large weapon and using it in the fight. It doesn't look like you have it with you, but could you tell us about it?"

A grin shot across my face. "I'd love to, Mr. Wolfe. I can't tell you much right now, other than that I'm working with Armsmaster to improve the design, but you'll be hearing more about it very soon."

He raised one eyebrow, but nodded and sat back down, taking notes. Another reporter was chosen out of the crowd.

The interview continued like that for a while longer; one person getting called on at a time. One magazine asked about why my recruitment was so fast, which I honestly answered with an 'I don't know.' After a half-dozen or so hard questions, the softballs started coming in, ranging from my personal hobbies to my favorite Protectorate member. Still super strange, somehow, but easier.

The interview ended not long after, and I Scattered off the stage, through the crowd, and then up through the ceiling -still with much more enthusiasm than I actually felt - to a final round of applause. I appeared in a small room on the floor above and found Challenger waiting for me, sitting in a spinny chair and not wearing a mask.

As he noticed me materializing, he stood and held out a hand. "You might as well be on the team now, so there's not much reason to keep this a secret anymore. My real name is Jacob Hardin."

He said it in a way that made it obvious how important he thought this was. I didn't really get it, but I could play along. "Nice to meet you, Jacob. I'm..." Well, he already knew me as Ruby, so... "Scatter."

He smiled. "The interview went well, I assume?"

"I guess? I don't really have a lot to compare it to."

"Good, now we've got to get you moving. You've got somebody waiting for you." The door opened on its own - pushed by one of his forcefields, I noticed. "I don't guess you know who Alexandria is, do you?"

* * *

A woman dressed in blacks and greys, helmet covering the top half of her head and sporting an impractically long cape absolutely dominated the room. Sure, it was a typical conference room, and there wasn't anybody else in there, but still. Just the way she held herself had weight to it.

She spoke, and wow her voice was imposing. Where Piggot was intimidating, this woman was almost terrifying. "Scatter, I believe?"

"Um, yes, that's me. I guess you're Alexandria?"

She nodded, and that simple action had _impact_. I'd seen people with this kind of presence before, in Salem and Ozpin, and sort of with Glynda or a couple of the Maidens, but Alexandria put them all to shame. "Yes, I am. I'd like to ask you some things about your homeworld."

"Okay. I guess I'll tell you what I can." Why was she here for that? Surely somebody who worked here could do this if that was all this was about.

"I understand that your world has had parahumans for many years. How long has that been, exactly?"

Um, okay then. "Nobody knows exactly. We don't have very good records going back more than about a century." The Grimm made sure of that.

"But your people have had powers for longer than the past few decades?"

Why did that matter? Why thirty years in particular? "Yeah, Semblances have been around for… hundreds or thousands of years, at least." The only real evidence I had for that was Oscar, but he'd always been vague about his exact age. He'd had at least a couple dozen bodies though, so that sounded about right.

The shadows of her eyes seemed to stare through me, even though I couldn't tell what exactly she was looking at through her mask. "Do you know what a trigger event is?"

"Um, no? I don't think so."

"It's the term we use for the moment when a person gains their powers." She paused, as if waiting for a reaction, then continued when I didn't respond. "It is typically accompanied by severe stress and trauma, to the point that it often leaves the new parahuman psychologically damaged."

I inhaled hard and my hands went to my mouth. I… That… That was horrible. I didn't want to think about what would have happened if that were true on Remnant; the Grimm attracted to the location of anyone who found their Semblance.

Alexandria tilted her head, just enough to get across her curiosity. "I assume it works differently on Remnant?"

"Yeah, way different. It…" I struggled to find the words. "Here." Channeling my uncle's teaching, I activated my Aura and focused, letting the familiar red glow cover me as my eyes began to shine. "It starts with Aura. There are all kinds of beliefs about what exactly it is, but it's always the first power you get, usually from someone using their own to activate it. A defensive shield, some healing. It gets stronger as you learn to use it, and you get new abilities; you get stronger and faster than you would otherwise, you learn to sense attacks before they hit you, and at some point in all of that you find your Semblance."

She seemed to process that for a moment. "Your people can choose who gains their powers?"

"Um, yes?"

"Does everyone on Remnant have them, then?"

"Oh, no!" So that's where she was going with that. "You have to be really strong when it comes to using it before you can awaken it in someone else, and it gets harder every time. A typical Huntsman might awaken a single person in their lifetime, and even the best won't awaken more than a few."

She nodded, taking that in stride. "Could you awaken someone now?"

Uh oh. I should've guessed that she might ask that. "No, I can't. I awoke the-" No, wait, don't talk about her. Not yet anyway. "Someone else about a year ago. It'll be a long time before I can do it again, and that's if it happens at all."

"I see." Yeah, she did see. See right through me, that is. "You said that aura is 'usually' activated by others. That means that it can appear another way?"

"It's _rare_. I've only met one person it happened to that lived through it, and he almost certainly would have been killed anyway if it hadn't appeared."

"What makes it so dangerous?" Her tone had changed a little. Concern?

"You know about the Grimm, right? I told the director about them." After a moment, she nodded. "They're attracted to humans and life in general, but strong negative emotions act like a giant signal fire to them. Fear, anger, stress, they all attract them, and the stronger the emotion, the more Grimm get drawn in. When Aura shows up on its own, it tends to do so a little like how it does here, which then draws an army of monsters to the person who just got it."

She gave no immediate reaction there, speaking up several moments later. "I suppose that will have to do. Let's move to a different subject - what can you tell me about your world in general?"

That was an easier topic. "Well, we've got fou- no, five Kingdoms spread across four continents...

* * *

"I personally think we've got a pretty good setup here."

It was later in the evening, and I was starting my first shift at the 'console.' At the same time, I was being taught everything that, if I was understanding this all right, I should have been told before I even accepted the job. I'd never had to deal with bureaucracy - or shifts, for that matter - back home, but I'd heard Ozpin's horror stories.

"You'll start as a junior member with a salary of seventy-eight thousand dollars per year - that's about three times the average earnings of a typical resident of Brockton Bay, for context - which will rise to a hundred and twelve thousand after a year of service."

That didn't really sound like that much, but I guess the currency would be different here. You could get that many Lien out of just a handful of Hunts on Remnant. I'd figure it out though. "Alright. Um… you might have to have somebody explain how this all works. Remnant's money is different, I think."

Assault - Ethan, as he had introduced himself once the door was shut - grinned. He was being a lot more serious than the last time I met him, but then this was an important conversation. It was good to know that he could take things seriously when he needed to. "I think we can handle that. We're typically taking some classes in our spare time anyway, so we can probably get you some starter-level courses in history and social studies to get you caught up."

"Okay, that makes sense." What I'd uncovered with my research at the library a few days ago had barely scratched the surface of either of those topics, and I hadn't thought to look for more information since then. It had been a really busy few days.

"Now for your responsibilities." He flashed a grin. "Don't worry, you'll get eased into anything you're not comfortable with. On top of the Console," He gestured at the big set of terminals we were sitting in front of, "you'll start off tomorrow morning running a joint patrol with…" he trailed off, shuffling through papers. "Dauntless, apparently. That's good, he'll make it easy on you. The patrol's just a simple walkaround of the city, showing the flag and all that. He's super popular in town, so he'll pull a lot of attention off you. You're still a new face though, so there's still gonna be some eyes on you. You'll probably get asked to sign some autographs and have some pictures taken. We don't technically have to, but Image... greatly encourages it, if you catch my drift."

Years ago, that would've been terrifying. "I can do that, yeah. I've had to deal with that kind of attention back home. Dauntless won't always be there to draw attention, right?"

He grinned without looking at me. He was watching a camera feed, where two costumed teenagers were walking through a crowd of people, smiling and shaking hands. "Nope, sorry. You'll get a patrol with everybody at some point." The grin vanished. "Velocity excepted, of course."

"Why not him? He's a speedster like me, right? That seems like a good combination."

"Yeah, exactly." At my questioning glance, he clarified, "Protectorate leadership has been pushing for somebody to transfer to Boston for weeks. They were trying to get Challenger, and we'd all kind of made our peace with that, but now that we've got two high-speed Movers, Velocity's being swapped out instead."

Oh. I wasn't really sure how to respond to that. We sat in silence for a moment, watching those teenagers begin to cross the forcefield bridge (so cool) that connected this base to the mainland. The Wards, I guessed. Two boys, one in red and gold armor with some very familiar-looking equipment and the other in white with some kind of decoration traced out in black.

Alright, Ruby, you've got to say something eventually. "Umm… I'm sorry to hear that? I guess you two are close?"

He blinked. "Yeah. Sorry about that, we're getting a little off-topic. Let's see, money, patrolling, pee-arr… oh, you'll be going through some power testing pretty soon. Don't know exactly when, but the PRT will be bringing in somebody to make sure that your power does what you think it does. Probably not an issue for you, but it's standard procedure. I don't think it'll take long, and then we can get into sparring and real training." The grin came back. "With what I saw of that recording, that should be pretty interesting all on its own."

He was certainly right about that. I'd seen a little of how the people here fought, and with the possible exception of Armsmaster, there was much less of a focus on skill than there was on using Semblances. Even the best fighters hadn't displayed anything close to Huntsman-level training. That was sort of expected - without Aura, a lot of Remnant's training methods wouldn't apply or would be too dangerous to attempt. Still, it would be interesting to get a solid idea of how people here fought without it.

The image of the forcefield bridge cut to another, showing the boys entering the Rig. Ethan stood up, stretched, and pulled on his mask. "For now though, how'd you like to meet a couple of the Wards?"

I put on my own mask, lifted my hood, and followed him out the door.

* * *

This **one took a while, sorry about that. Can't make any promises that the next one will be any faster, but a man can dream, right? It's been technically started, at least, and I'm trying a couple of new strategies for increasing the pace, so we'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading, and I'll see y'all next time!**


	9. Roots 2-2

**Roots 2.2**

"Hey guys, how'd the patrol go?"

A young-sounding voice responded casually, "Same as usual. Not a peep from anybody who matters, and nobody's dumb enough to cause trouble on a known patrol route, let alone one that's literally within sight of the Rig or the PRT building the entire time."

"So you're saying you'd prefer it if people were getting mugged within sight of the Rig, are you?"

A wry chuckle. "I'd prefer to not be patrolling where people aren't getting mugged."

I chose that moment to speak up, "I'm kinda with the kid, to be honest." I stepped out from around the corner. The one in power armor was the one talking, and I saw his eyebrows rise from behind his visor.

Ethan glanced backward towards me and rolled his eyes with a smile. "Well, there goes the surprise, I guess. Clock, Kid, this is Scatter."

"Ah, so that's why we wrapped up over here this time." Red stepped forward, holding out a hand to shake. "I'm Kid Win, that's Clockblocker." White gave a sloppy, Vacuan-style salute.

Assault spoke up again; "I figured you should meet up with the Wards at some point, and their patrol ended the at the same time our shift did. We'll head over to the PRT building in a bit to meet the rest of them."

"Well then, nice meeting you," I said, shaking Kid Win's hand.

He smiled. "So you're 'with me,' huh? Maybe they'll listen to you if you told them we're tough enough to go a little further out?"

Uh, what? I stammered, "Um, I don't think, I…"

"Back off, Kid." Assault stepped between us, giving him a hard look. "I know how you feel, but this isn't the time." He turned back to me, looking a little annoyed. "Sorry about that. Want to let these two report in, then head over to the Wards base with them?

* * *

The Wards were scattered about the room, but our entry had attracted some attention. An older, very muscular boy in skintight white with a lion motif sat at a terminal station very similar to the one I had just been working at, watching a camera feed that seemed to be blurring from place to place - a helmet camera, from the height and the motion. He glanced in my direction, looked over to the girl next to him, then grimaced and waved with one hand before returning his focus to his console. Beside him, clearly much more focused on me, the girl was dressed in solid black with a _fantastic_ cloak, a domino mask, a raised eyebrow, and a deep frown.

Exiting a short hallway opposite the elevator was a younger girl in whites and greens, a visor over her eyes as she looked me over. A boy in a rust-red helmet stuck his head out of a door in that direction as well, made eye contact, and then vanished back inside.

The girl in green was the first to speak up, as Clockblocker and Kid Win walked past us to sit down. "So... I guess you're Scatter? I figured you'd be coming down here soon."

She sounded... a little familiar. "Yep, that's me! I guess you'd be Vista?"

"Yeah. Most of us saw the video of your fight against the twins, it was pretty impressive. Where'd you learn how to fight?"

Oh. Well, that was gonna come up eventually, but still. I glanced back to Assault, who raised an eyebrow at me. Right, he didn't know either.

"That's... kind of a long story. If I'm allowed to, It'd probably be best if I told everybody at once, including the Protectorate. There are a few people who already know, but it's kind of complicated."

"Huh." There were several reactions to that, mostly expressing interest or annoyance. The girl in black stood out; she looked somewhere between fascinated and angry.

Vista didn't get the chance to say any more before the boy from down the hall exited his room, followed by another in a hastily-applied domino mask, who was the first to speak. "Ma'am! Glad to meet you, I'm Gallant, this is Aegis. Welcome to the Wards compound!" He held out a hand, which I shook.

Lots of introductions very quickly were starting to blend together. Clockblocker, Kid Win, Vista, Gallant, Aegis... "That makes him Triumph," I said, indicating the lion-guy, "and you'd be Shadow Stalker?"

The girl in black met my eyes. "That's me." There was a bit of an awkward silence then where she looked me up and down, appraising. It ended with Triumph nudging her with a disapproving look, prompting a huff of frustration as she spun her chair back around to the console.

"Anyway -" "So where-" Gallant and Vista started talking at the same time, then traded glances. Vista ducked her head and blushed, and Gallant continued with a smile, "I haven't actually watched that video, but I heard it was pretty impressive. Your interview mentioned a scythe, right?"

"Yeah. Apparently, it's 'too dangerous' for the public to accept or something, so they won't let me use it."

Kid Win perked up at that, but Vista talked first. "What would make it dangerous? They're usually alright with melee weapons… when the Protectorate are using them, anyway."

I grinned wide, not that they could see it. "I designed it myself back when I was a kid - it's got four different standard setups for combat, a high-impact magnetically-powered sniper rifle built into the haft, I can channel different Dust effects into the blade -"

Aegis interrupted, "Dust?"

Heheh, whoops. "Umm… that's kind of a long story too. I can use different elemental effects in combination with the ammunition or the blade - fire, lightning, ice…"

"You're a Tinker too?" Kid had been looking more and more interested the whole time I'd been talking, and finally found a moment to talk.

"No… yes? I guess sort of, yeah." At least, I was here. Behind me, from where he was leaning back against the wall, listening in, Assault's phone rang, and he stepped into the hallway to answer the call.

"What's your specialty?"

"Uhh, I don't know what that means."

"The thing you're best at making, that you can do and nobody else can, or that you can do better than any other Tinker."

This was gonna get confusing fast if I didn't tell them anything. "I don't think I have one. Like I said, it's a-"

"Long story?"

"...Yeah. Things work differently where I come from, sorry. People that can make that kind of stuff are pretty common."

"Is that how it works? I didn't think powers changed like that based on where you're from."

Assault interrupted, "Sorry to cut this short, but we've got to head out. Somebody's pulled some strings to get you into power testing early, you're being shipped out to Boston for a couple days."

"Already?"

"Yeah, it's weird. Maybe something about your background has them worried. They're prepping the van right now, we should head up there."

Disappointed, I looked back to the Wards, who were… exchanging glances and poorly suppressed laughter. "What is it?"

Vista was the one to respond. "They haven't told you what that'll be like, have they?"

"Uh, no? It's just power testing, how bad could it be?"

* * *

I slumped onto my bed, barely even noticing the dullness of the room. I smelled terrible, and my hair was plastered to my scalp to the point that I might have been worried about the dye washing out if I'd cared enough to notice. I would never have expected something as innocuous-sounding as 'power testing' to be that exhausting, even compared to Huntsman training, but it had managed to be.

They'd broken down my Aura over and over again with different kinds of attacks, trying out fire and electricity and raw force and other things I'd never even thought of in order to figure out exactly how much damage I could take. They'd blindfolded me, plugged my ears, and then tried to hit me to try and figure out how well I could sense attacks coming. They'd gone over my speed, my teleportation, and everything in between to figure out exactly how far my Semblance could go.

There was a knock on the door. I moaned in the intruder's general direction, and apparently, that was permission enough for... Vista to invite herself in. Okay then.

"Wow, they really went all out on you, didn't they?"

She sounded smug. Why did she sound smug? "...did you know this was going to happen?"

"Yeah, everybody did. We all had to go through the wringer up there... though you actually look worse off than most. What happened?"

I squeezed my eyes shut. "Apparently, my powers are broad enough that they could barely fit in all the testing they needed."

She seemed to puzzle that over for a second. "But couldn't they just add an extra day?"

"That's what I said!"

I heard a huff - she was laughing quietly. "Alright, well I hate to bring you more bad news, but-"

I cut her off with a groan.

"-Assault sent me, he's wanting to spar." She was quiet for a moment. "Want me to tell him you were asleep when I found you?"

I buried myself further into the pillows.

"Gotcha. Have a good rest." She left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her. Moments later, I was dreaming of home.

* * *

The training room where I'd gone through Armsmaster's initial testing was more crowded this time. A small group of... relatively athletic people jogged on treadmills, lifted weights, and did other such things at various points across the room. My costumed appearance drew some interested looks, but no one approached.

"So how'd it go?" Assault asked, stepping out from behind the door and dragging out the last word to be two syllables long.

"Not... the worst thing I've ever been through." Technically the truth.

"So you should be peachy for a spar now, right?" He said it loudly enough to draw attention, and I could sense the excitement from across the room. Equipment started getting put away, and the people started migrating for a door directly under the viewing booth.

The sleep had helped, but I still wasn't quite at full strength. Still though, probably not a good idea to say no, those guys seemed excited. "Sure, I guess. Just you and me?"

"Yeah, I think so. What'd they rate you for?"

"Uh..." I had to rack my memory. Lots of numbers to remember. "Breaker... seven, Mover five, Stranger three for my Semblance, Brute-Thinker four for my Aura, and a Tinker two just because Remnant is more advanced than Earth is, technologically. I'm... not really sure what most of that means, to be honest."

He nodded. "Yeah, that's something else you'll need to get caught up on. It doesn't matter that much for us, but hearing what they put you at to begin with is useful. You're pretty versatile." I blushed at the compliment. "Plus, with your combat experience... well, this oughta be interesting."

A few minutes later, one of the guys who'd been working out in here before I arrived was up in the booth, holding a microphone and wearing a black and white striped shirt. That had caused a lot of laughter that I didn't understand.

 _"In this corner, the defender of his title, he's been operating for ten-I MEAN FOUR years,"_ More laughter. There must've been some in-joke that I wasn't getting. _"The Striker Seven, Mover Three, the neverending onslaught, ASSAULT!"_

 _"And in this corner, a newcomer to our little ring, already with a very impressive takedown under her belt - Breaker Seven, Mover Five, Brute/Thinker Four, Little Red Reaping Hood herself, SCATTER!"_

I was so confused, I didn't even know where to begin. I decided to just focus on the fight.

 _"Ready!"_

 _"Three!"_

 _"Two!"_

 _One!_

 _"Begin!"_

Assault jerked forward, accelerating way faster than I would've expected him to manage from a standstill. Slower than me at my top speed, for sure, but he might've had an advantage in maneuverability.

My Aura flared in warning, and I scattered around the punch to my gut, diving around him and reforming on the other side. I spun around for a kick to his side, he raised an arm to block, and my foot stopped dead the moment it touched him.

If I remembered right, his power worked off of physical force. He'd absorbed the force of that attack, and now he'd be able to use it against me. How was I supposed to fight someone that I couldn't even attack?

His elbow shot back towards me, and I caught it on my guard rather than dodge. I could feel the damage to my Aura, but it didn't do that much and hopefully, it made him use up some amount of his stored energy.

He spun, sending a flurry of punches my way, and I continued blocking. His guard was a little sloppy, but the one time I got a punch in to take advantage, I just bounced off him. Panicking a little as my Aura dropped further and further, I scattered _up_ , landing on the platform above to give myself some breathing room.

I dipped fully into my power, and the world vanished. Vague impressions of vibrations in the air and platform made me aware of motion, things changing, as the outline of my surroundings that I'd trained myself to burn into my memory became less and less accurate as time went on. My aura warped and stretched, enveloping several feet of the platform in either direction and filling the area with loose petals.

No more than a couple seconds after I landed, I felt the platform I'd wrapped myself around shudder as Assault made a standing jump ten feet in the air to land just in front of the cloud of rose petals that occupied my former position.

He threw another punch, and in his hesitant confusion when the cloud didn't react, I materialized from a portion of my Aura that had been behind him and kicked him in the back before I could hit the ground and alert him to where I was.

That did something. He stumbled forward, barely catching himself on the railing of the platform before whirling around to face me. He couldn't block attacks he didn't know were coming.

I rushed him, hoping I could pull a similar trick, but he pushed off the railing, bending it down as he launched himself up, before ricocheting off an upper catwalk and coming at me from above. I juked to the side, jumping the gap to yet another walkway before going up again, to the second level. A glance behind me revealed him following, taking a running leap that carried him farther up than it had any right to, and allowing him to land right where I had.

He lunged, and I scattered once more, managing to get a grip on his wrist with both hands as I tried to pull him into the railing. He put out a hand to catch himself, and before he made contact I vanished, teleporting under the platform before gripping the floor above me and swinging over, successfully planting a foot in his back before launching backward and up.

We paused there, me on the third, topmost layer of catwalks and him on the layer below, on a walkway running perpendicular to mine. At a guess, there were fifteen feet of horizontal distance between us, and around ten vertical. I could make the jump, and I was pretty sure he could too, but neither of us would be able to cross the distance without the other taking advantage, and we both knew it.

I couldn't use the same took a chance, glancing around the room to see if I could find something to take advantage of. There wasn't much at this level, thirty feet off the ground. There was another fifteen feet or so between this platform and the ceiling, but the only thing higher than me was one of the hoops that had been welded to the wall at random intervals. Below… nothing new. Assault, the catwalks, then the ground.

One section of the catwalk caught my eye - the place where Assault had dented it while pushing himself up. A plan unfurled in my mind, and I looked back to my opponent.

Maybe five seconds after our stalemate began, I saw him tense, preparing to move. I didn't know where he was going, but it didn't really matter. At the same moment he kicked off, aiming to get above and past me, I flew directly for him, scattering around the kick he sent at me, then around the rest of him.

He hit one of the hoops, and ricocheted off it, coming back around for me. I landed on the first level of catwalks, spun around and raised my guard. I saw his eyes flicker from side to side, trying to find the trap before he hit me, but he could only have seen it before. I scattered, letting him fall _through_ me and forcing him to hit the damaged railing at full force. The rail sheared off instantly, and he began falling towards the floor.

He spun to face the ground, preparing to do something, but before he got the chance I was ahead of him, preparing to kick off his chest. I bounced off, the redirection almost painful, but he paid for it once the chunk of railing I'd thrown at him before I started moving hit him in the back of the neck.

Using the momentum from his redirection, I pulled into a backflip and landed in a three-point superhero pose. He, meanwhile, fell flat on his face.

"...ow."

"Oh! Are you alright? You didn't break anythi-"

"No, no, I'm fine! That was…". He chuckled. "Well played. I wasn't expecting- what was that you threw at me, the railing?"

"Umm, yeah?"

"Nicely done, I thought I was gonna counter you a little harder than I did, but you worked around it. Where did you say you learned to fight, again?"

Ugh. I was getting tired of keeping stuff secret. "Yeah, everyone should probably know the details there. If nothing else, it'll make explanations easier. Let's go ask the Director if she can get everybody together for a bit. This'll be easier to explain to the whole group."

* * *

Dauntless was the first to speak. "What's this all about, exactly?"

I was in a conference room, seated at Director Piggot's left, with Armsmaster on her right and the rest of the Protectorate and Wards teams seated on both sides of the table. It was honestly kind of impressive, seeing the number of people they had at their disposal. A group of Huntsmen of this size could be close to unstoppable if they really wanted to be. In addition, there were several other people dressed in fancy suits instead of costumes; maybe some of the PRT's soldiers? I saw Shane back in the corner, so maybe they were just normal employees.

The Director responded. "Many of you have likely noticed that we've been keeping a lid on the details of the past of our newest Protectorate member. That is going to remain the case to anyone outside this room - if you're in here and don't already know, we are informing you because you will be working closely with Scatter, or because it is directly relevant to your work here. No one else is to be told without the express permission of myself or my superiors, is that understood?"

There was a collection of quiet 'yes ma'am's in response, and the entire crowd seemed intrigued. Everyone likes a mystery.

"Alright then, if that's clear, then I'll turn it over to Scatter herself. Please hold all questions until the end. Scatter?"

The entire table turned to me.

Well, here goes. "I'm… not quite from around here…"

* * *

 **I live! This one fought me a little, but help from the Cauldron Discord got me through it (thanks to everyone over there!) I wound up having to rewrite like 600 words near the end of this one, and that only delayed it by like two days.**

 **By the way, most of you probably haven't seen it yet, but my profile page will now contain a sort of mini-progress-blog that I'll update on occasion.**

 **One more thing; I've just started my freshman year of college, and I'm not really sure how it'll affect update speed. So far, it doesn't seem to have had too big of an effect, but we'll have to see how it goes. If I vanish into the ether for a few months (again...) then that's probably why. I'll try to keep posting stuff to the profile at least, even if it's just a sort of 'no progress, see you next week' thing.**

 **As always, critique is appreciated, thank you all for reading, and I'll see you next time!**


	10. Roots 2-3

**Roots 2.3**

Armsmaster looked unhappy, not that I could imagine why. I guess I was taking up his workshop time, but still. I had thought he would love this kind of thing.

"Tell me again what you're trying to do here?"

It… probably didn't help that I wasn't having any luck. Weiss was always better with Dust, dang it. "Lightning Dust gets used for stun rounds a lot back home, but if you do it right, a similar technique can be used to do… aha! This!"

The yellow Dust crystal in my hand finally flashed, and once the spots were cleared from my eyes I held a crackling, sparking dagger. I swiped it through the table, leaving scorch marks - oh, is he mad at me again?

He spoke again. "What… exactly… is that?" He... actually sounded more interested than upset. Perfect.

"Lightning Dust! We use it for, like, electric generators on Remnant, but Huntsmen use it more often as ammunition. Load it into a Dust cartridge, it gets activated right as it fires, and instead of a chunk of crystal, you've got a tangible cloud of lightning flying at your target. Do it right, and it stuns people instead of, y'know, killing them."

Armsmaster had picked up one of the other cartridges now and was looking it over. He walked over to a bench on the wall, and stuck it into some kind of… scanner? "How do you control the amperage, keep it from killing people?"

That was a very good question. "It just kind of happens. Dust seems to naturally work in really convenient ways, and nobody knows why."

"...Interesting." He looked back to the other cartridges. "What do the other colors do?"

Armsmaster was sounding more and more intrigued. "Red's fire, pretty much what it sounds like. Green's wind, same deal. The blue is ice; when the crystal activates, it turns into a bunch of ice - like, gallons of it for an average sized crystal."

"I see." He turned around to face me. "As fascinating as this has been, what exactly is it you're trying to do? I assume it involves the electric knife you're holding?"

I nodded. "I don't have anywhere near the Dust supply I'd need for it, but take this…" I waved the knife. "And scale it up to like two dozen times its current size…"

His eyes widened beneath his helmet. "I see. That being said, you yourself said you're limited in resources. What's your plan?"

Now here was the kicker. "I was hoping that's where you could help. I know this world doesn't have Dust occurring naturally, but I was hoping you could come up with a way of synthesizing it, or maybe have something else that did the same thing."

"Hmm. My specialty doesn't lie very close to matter synthesis… but I might actually have something for you in terms of the other option. It would still require you to blunt your blade temporarily, but perhaps I could work up a better solution, given time..."

Ugh. I hated the idea, but as long as it was temporary… "What do you have?"

He stepped around the table, and a locker behind me opened on its own. Going to it, he retrieved a small box, made of raw, unpainted metal and with dark lines at the seams. He crossed over to his scanner, grabbed a small chunk of metal from underneath the table it sat on, and laid the box and the metal together inside.

Closing the lid, he stepped back as the lights dimmed down and the box activated. Through the transparent blue of the scanner, I saw the box's seams begin glowing with light, and it burst into lightning, flickering along the box's interior.

"Wooooah"

Armsmaster seemed satisfied with himself. "I built it a few months ago, meant it to essentially be a Lung-scale taser. He wound up shrugging it off, so I scrapped the project, but it might be useful to you. Attach it to your weapon, and you should be able to coat the blade in visible electricity, and I can alter with the generator to lower the power to human-safe levels."

I was excited, but his tone at the end implied there was more he wasn't saying. "And?"

He seemed to think for a minute. "Let's make a deal. I'll give you this and help you maintain it, and start working on a method that would let you keep your blade's edge, and in exchange, we have a talk about Remnant's technology some time. If it's all based around this Dust, then I'd like to see how much we can incorporate into my own gear."

That seemed reasonable enough. "Sounds good to me! How long will it take you to get it ready?"

"Give me a few hours. I should have it done after your patrol. Keep that conversation in mind, please."

"Will do- wait, the patrol! What time is it?" I looked around frantically. Why didn't he have a clock in here?

"Twelve thirty-four, you're fine."

"Oh. Right." Heads-up display in his visor, probably. Made sense. "I should probably go get ready for that. Thank you again!"

* * *

"Bridge room, bridge room… there!"

I opened the door, stumbling through to find Dauntless waving at me. "Hello again!" he said, waving at me.

Once the brief moment of deja vu passed, I was able to respond. "Hello. So... I guess we're patrolling together now?"

"That's right! We'll start you off easy - across the bridge, through the boardwalk, then veer off into some of the seedier parts of town. I'd give us a fifty-fifty shot of running into something we can help deal with, but odds are we won't have any serious trouble. You've got one of the communicators, right? Know how to use it?"

"Yeah, it's pretty self-explanatory. Actually, I'm more worried about the fans than I am about any fighting."

"Well then, that is something that the Daring Dauntless can help you with!" The sentence started at a normal volume, then quickly rose to a triumphant shout. "I shall draw the enemy fire as well as I'm able, and we'll be out of the trenches A-S-A-P!"

As cheesy as it was, it was somehow still reassuring. He had his schtick down pat. "Okay then. I guess we should get going!"

The doors opened, and the light streamed in. The smooth blue of the forcefield bridge stretched out ahead of us, thirty or so feet wide and several hundred yards long; I'd looked this up earlier, and I knew that it was connected to a small building on the shoreline, subtly fortified as a defensive measure. Dauntless' glowing boots apparently let him fly, so we made good time across a bridge that would probably have taken us a good half-hour if we'd had to walk it normally.

By the time we exited the far building, nodding greetings to the PRT troopers based inside as we passed through, there was already a small crowd gathered about the loose fence on the other side. Dauntless spoke quietly enough that only I could hear him; "Just shake hands, smile - yes, they can tell if you're smiling, your whole body language changes - and sign autographs if you'd like. You don't have to talk to anybody if you don't want to, though it really wouldn't hurt." He pulled away slightly as we reached the crowd.

The noise was what struck me first. People shouting, each and every one struggling to be heard over all the others - reporters asking questions that I couldn't hear, civilians and tourists waving sheafs of paper, books, and pictures, police shouting in order to keep everything calm - I almost froze entirely until I saw Dauntless marching forward into the mob, grabbing someone's pen completely at random and start signing and shaking hands.

I could do this. It was just civilians.

Seeing him so seemingly at home, I was able to take another step. I forced a smile onto my face and started making my way through. The crowd parted ahead of me, a shocking feat given how dense they seemed to be, and I was able to keep on walking relatively unimpeded.

Dauntless was ahead of me, shining bright and drawing a bunch of attention. I could see him hovering a couple inches off the ground to lift him up above the crowd; meanwhile, my own relatively short stature made sure that even more eyes were on him. He really knew what he was doing.

Following his example, I took a marker somebody was holding out and signed- was that a T-shirt with my symbol on it? Where had they gotten that? As soon as I finished it had vanished back into the crowd, replaced by stuff ranging from newspaper clippings to toys to stuff I didn't even recognize. I kept signing, experimenting with the signature a little but trying as hard as I could to keep it recognizable.

I kept moving forward, saw Dauntless slow down ahead of me, realized that the crowd was only a few more feet deep, and sped up a little. I couldn't keep up with the suffocating chaos, and whether I was able to fake it or not I wasn't going to be able to take it for long.

I finally passed through the final line of people and saw Dauntless turned around back towards me. He waved me towards him as he began to fly off, headed vaguely northwest. Before I followed him though, I turned around to face the crowd. Not really sure what I was doing, I gave them a wave, hand high in the air so even the people further back could see me.

I scattered away to the sound of applause and cheering, headed off after Dauntless.

"You handled yourself well out there. The wave, in particular, that was downright inspired."

He'd seen that? I thought he was flying the other way. "I mean, it was just a wave…"

"Just a wave? You used your powers, flying up slightly to make yourself seen, you were surrounded by a cloud of petals, I'm pretty sure you were glowing, just a bit. I'd bet money that that image will be in the newspapers this evening."

"I… did? I was just waving before flying away, I didn't think… I was more scared than anything. The petals were there because I was already using my Semblance, so I could get out of there faster."

"If you really just wanted to get out of there, I don't think you would've waved like you did."

Didn't I? I wasn't really sure how to respond to that. I was gonna be a hero while I was here, but I hadn't really thought much about the PR side of things. I just figured I'd try and slide under the public's radar while I was here so that it wouldn't make too big of a splash when I vanished to go back home.

When I didn't respond, Dauntless kept talking. "I don't know how much of this stuff you did where you come from, but if you keep up the kind of thing you just managed, you'll end up just fine here. You'll have to work at it - nobody can pull this kind of stuff off without any effort for very long - but I think you have the chance at a strong future here, if you want it."

I smiled. "No offense, but I think I'd rather have a strong future on Remnant."

His only response was laughter.

We moved on, Dauntless flying over me as I ran across the rooftops, and I was surprised at how quickly the streets went downhill. In the span of a couple of blocks, the buildings went from well-maintained brickwork and siding to dank, dirty concrete and metal warehouses. Graffiti covered most of the walls, and the sidewalks beneath us grew more cracked and filled with weeds with every step.

"Scatter, meet The Docks. ABB territory, and the biggest area for non-powered crime too. If we're gonna find any action, it'll be here!"

"Alright!" I hadn't had a real fight since the Twins… wow, had that really been a full week before? The time was going by faster than I thought.

...My team probably knew I was missing by now. If I knew them, they'd have started hunting down Raven as soon as they heard. Hopefully, they had decided to bring in extra help this time, and not just charge in without a plan like we usually did...

"Hey, you doing alright?" Dauntless must've noticed my change in mood. I didn't know how, with me wrapped up in my cloak and a full-face mask, but he must have.

I pushed the thoughts away, returning to the excitement from moments before. "Yep, I'm fine! Let's go!" I rushed ahead, dashing to the next roof and leaving those thoughts behind. Dauntless flew to catch up after a moment but didn't push the question any further.

The patrol was supposed to last about three hours, and by that point maybe half of one had passed. By the time we got to the halfway point, we hadn't encountered anything except some weird looks from the passersby, alternating between fear and, oddly, anger. Dauntless flew down once or twice, and he managed to get a couple of kids excited, but the adults seemed to edge away from him.

Once he came back up, I raised the question. "What's up with the people here? I thought the Protectorate was all about PR, getting people excited over the heroes. It… doesn't seem like it's working here."

What I could see of Dauntless' expression turned sour. "It doesn't, always. A lot of independents and vigilantes make the mistake of assuming that makes it not matter, which is absolutely false, but… well. There aren't enough heroes to be everywhere at once. People get hurt, and when we fail to intervene, we get blamed for it. The end result usually looks something like this."

"That just means we need to work harder. Maybe we can't be everywhere at once, but neither can the bad guys, right?"

"Well, there's a lot more of them than there are of us." He raised his voice a little, slipping into his triumphant hero-tone as we passed a mother and her two children walking hurriedly down the street. "You work fast enough we can barely keep up with you!" The mother glanced up at us, and though her younger son looked excited she grimaced and ushered him along.

My confusion must have carried through my body language since he kept explaining, "I'm not sure what it was like where you came from, but here… to put it bluntly, we're outnumbered and outgunned on almost every count, and not every patrol ends as successfully as your first day here did. It's why our PR is so important; because if people knew how bad off things really are, there'd be mass panic."

That caught me off-guard. Oscar's constant reminders about ensuring things stayed secret, hiding as much as he could, because of the panic he believed that his knowledge could bring. I was never really sure whether to agree with him or not - some of what we hid could have done a lot of good in the long run, but when any major disturbance could trigger a major Grimm attack… I had gone along with it because of that. I would need to think about how I was going to react to it here.

I didn't respond, and he let the conversation end. We continued on, swapping small talk and little else for the patrol's remainder.

* * *

That evening, I finally found myself with nothing urgent to do. After some exploring in-costume, I found myself in what must have been some kind of break room on the Rig. It wasn't my first time to really rest since I'd gotten here, but it was close, and it felt really good to just sit back and chill for once.

Crescent Rose, retrieved from Armsmaster's workshop after the patrol with Dauntless, sat partially dismantled on the table in front of me, and the module Armsmaster had built while I was out was among the pieces. It was smaller than expected, but it was still going to be tricky to fit it in without taking things out.

I was debating between adding a slot to allow it to rest inside the barrel and just welding it to the outside when I heard the door open behind me. A woman's voice spoke, "I'm glad to see you're settling in."

I half-turned to look over the back of the couch and saw the speaker, dressed in tight camouflage and a colorful scarf in red, white, and blue. Miss Militia. Her scarf was pulled down, and I could see her full face.

I responded carefully as I eased the collapsing barrel extension back into place. "Slowly, but yeah. It's been a little crazy in the past few days."

She walked over to the window, looking out at the city past the forcefield bubble. "I certainly know that feeling." She turned back towards me. "I don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm Hannah."

"Ruby. I'd shake your hand, but, uh…" I reached for the rag before realizing it was already stained black with so much grease that there was no hope of getting my hands clean.

She smiled, then sat down on the next comfy chair over. "I understand. I've worked with Armsmaster long enough to get used to the typical Tinker quirks. If I ask what you're doing, will it set off a whole exhibition?"

"It… might. We should probably avoid that, heh." I floundered for a conversation topic. "So your thing is guns, right? How does that work?"

She smiled, and a knife sheathed at her side seemed to fly apart into a green-black cloud. The cloud orbited her head once before she raised her hand to catch it as it rematerialized into an assault rifle. "It's not just guns, but it's like this. Any weapon I can carry that I've seen before, and I can resummon it to reload… you seem impressed."

That was _so cool!_ "You can do that with _any_ weapon? No risk of jamming, no weight issues, you haven't b- wait, how do you use your power for hero stuff? I didn't think people were happy with heroes using deadly weapons."

The rifle flickered back into a cloud of energy, then reformed as a machete, then a handgun in one of the holsters around her waist. "You're right, to a point. If a hero can get away with operating without weapons, then the PR department will try to keep them from using them unless necessary. It really does give off the wrong image, though Dauntless could probably explain that better than I could. There are exceptions for those who can't operate without weapons - Armsmaster, myself. Even then, we're limited. I use rubber bullets most of the time, and Armsmaster takes a great deal of care to avoid doing permanent damage."

That still didn't make sense, but it wasn't worth the argument right then. "I guess..."

Hannah continued; "That's not to say that we never go harder. When the public doesn't see, or when we're up against a villain that won't hold back, then the showmanship stops. I swap to lethal ammunition, Dauntless ups the charge on his Arclance, Velocity pulls out this little knife designed to function with his power... though I guess that's not as relevant now."

Oh, right. "I heard the Director kind of replaced him with me. I haven't really seen how close the team is though… I haven't messed up something important by joining the team, right? I wouldn't have been very happy if one of my teammates had been replaced out of nowhere, so…"

She shook her head as she responded, "No, not at all. Assault and Battery will probably miss him, but transfers are pretty common. They can keep in contact, it'll be fine."

She seemed pretty confident there, which I took as a good sign. "Alright, that's good. Umm… you mentioned going harder sometimes, how often does that happen?"

"It varies. Most of the villains around here are smart enough to not draw too much ire, but they go too far on occasion. Then you've got the Brutes or similar that can just take it, so we'll go harder on them on occasion. Hookwolf, the Twins, Trainwreck." Something seemed to occur to her, and she continued, "Don't worry though, we don't go for the kill unless it's absolutely necessary."

Why would I be worried about that? I understood not wanting to kill, but sometimes you didn't have a choice. "Why, though? They kill people, right? Why go out of our way to avoid doing the same?"

Her expression hardened, just a little. "They don't all kill, and just because they do doesn't mean we need to sink to their level. Don't assume that we avoid it at all costs, either - if it becomes necessary, then we will… or at least I will. That doesn't mean it's the first option we jump to, either."

I was getting the impression that this was a bad topic, so I backed off. "Okay, okay." It felt like they were expecting a totally different mindset than my usual one, and it seemed like what they wanted was crazy. I took the excuse of needing to reattach a particularly complex geartrain to the base of Crescent Rose's blade to avoid having to respond, hoping that Hannah would continue the conversation.

I saw the flickering of her power out of the corner of my eye, as the cloud seemed to take a new form every couple of seconds. After a few moments of awkward silence, she seemed to settle on a very large pistol, which she holstered as she stood. "I should probably leave you to your work. It was nice meeting you, Ruby."

"Uhh, yeah, you too," I stammered as she headed for the door. When I heard it shut behind her, I slumped back into my chair. That was the third of my new teammates I'd talked to today, and I'd wound up in an argument with her. It was like my first few days as Weiss' partner all over again. Hopefully, this would solve itself just as quickly as that situation had.

I carefully ignored the fact that Ozpin wasn't around to fix our issues this time.

* * *

 **Woah, this happened quick. This writing goal is doing some good work, heh.**

 **Not _super_ happy with every piece of this one, but it's acceptable. We're getting to some of the underlying ideas behind this story now, which I'm pretty happy about, and I'll be introducing another minor subplot in the next chapter. Speaking of which, I'm gonna hope I can keep up this level of output, and aim for a release on either October 20 or 27. No promises though, sorry.**

 **As usual, thanks for reading, constructive criticism is appreciated, and I'll see you next time!**


	11. Roots 2-4

**Roots 2.4**

"Aaaaand, done!"

Armsmaster looked up from... whatever he was doing to a Gravity Dust round at the other end of his lab. "How does it look?"

I lifted Crescent Rose off the table, gave her an experimental twirl to test the balance, then held the blade out to in front of me and pressed one of the three new switches present on the outer casing. Electricity crackled into life on the blade, stopping at newly-added insulation wrapped around the barrel. I tilted her down toward the floor, and it arced to reach the last inch or so to the ground like a miniaturized Lightning Dust overload.

"We could probably stand to lower the voltage a bit, but it looks like it works! I'll still need to swap out for a blunted blade… and actually make that blade, but so far so good."

He nodded. "Did you get the paperwork for it submitted?"

"...Paperwork?"

He straightened, leaving his project on the table. "Nobody told you it was required, did they?"

"Umm… no."

"Here." He moved to a desk near the door and pulled out a stack of papers two fingers thick. That couldn't be… "Tinkertech application paperwork. You technically should have filled this out for having your scythe in the first place, but this works."

"Right." This would be fine, right? "I guess I'll go do that, then. Thank you for your help!"

He nodded. "Keep that future conversation in mind, please. You can bring it back here, once you're finished."

* * *

Four hours later, after struggling through as much of the paperwork as I could, I went hunting for Armsmaster. A lot of this stuff wasn't really meant for someone like me - I'd built Crescent Rose years ago, and rebuilt her dozens of times in the interim, so how was I supposed to know how much the parts cost? Especially given that I bought them all with Lien, not Dollars.

Apparently, he had left for an emergency 'crisis point' event, whatever that was, just minutes before I finished, so I decided to just leave it in his lab.

By that point, it was getting close to sundown - half an hour earlier than I was used to at this time of year in Vale, but I guess we were a lot further north here - so I wasn't expecting to find Vista wandering the halls. She looked like she was going somewhere, so I nodded in greeting and kept walking. The footsteps that stopped behind me before coming back my way gave me pause though.

I turned back around, and Vista froze. "Do you... need something?" I asked.

She took a moment before responding, then took a deep breath and recited, "Yeah, I was over here looking for you. That video of you beating up Fenja and Menja was really impressive, and Kid Win told me that you agreed that we should get to do more, so I wanted to ask if you could help give me some pointers on fighting up-close"

She said it all in one breath and looked up at me, almost nervously. Had she practiced that ahead of time? I'd helped train Oscar back before he fully merged with Ozpin, and I'd done the same thing for Carmine a few months later, so she could have just asked. "Okay, I can do that."

Vista looked startled. "Really? Just like that? You're not wor-" She cut herself off.

"Not worried?"

She looked away. "Worried that I'll get myself hurt, or take it as an excuse to get into the thick of a fight, or get overconfident and not back off when I should have, or-"

I interrupted, "No, I get it. It's… not a problem I ever had, I was kind of groomed for this, but I'll give you some training if you want-" I held up a hand to cut her off, "but we'll start slow. I've never trained someone without Aura before, so we're gonna start off with basic blocking and dodging until I can figure out exactly how to do this. Make sense?"

Vista nodded, clearly holding back her excitement. "When do we get started?"

I thought to the patrol schedule. If I remembered right, she wasn't set for anything for a couple days, so… "Is there anything you've got to do tonight?"

"Uhh, no?"

"Well, let's do it now, then. I've got to drop this off with Armsmaster, then I can meet you in the gym in a few minutes?"

She seemed kind of… startled, but I could see a smile under her visor. "Okay then!"

I smiled, then turned around and headed for Armsmaster's workshop, and I heard Vista's footsteps going the other way after a few seconds. I… wasn't quite sure what to make of her, yet. She clearly wanted to be taken seriously, which was something I understood well enough. There were actually a lot of similarities between her current situation and where I was when I started training at Beacon - the youngest member of our respective teams, strong but not trusted to be able to pull our weight.

The difference, I realized, was in our circumstances. Ozpin had, for whatever reason, decided to choose me as the leader, and I had managed to prove myself to Weiss and Blake in the following weeks. The way the Wards were structured though, with the oldest member being the one in charge, it would be years before she got a chance to do the same.

That would explain her wanting to train, then. She wanted to get strong enough in close-quarters to prove herself… that could get dangerous. All the issues she'd mentioned before could totally come into play here. I'd need to be careful.

I made my way down to Armsmaster's lab and slid the paperwork into a slot in the door. Then, I turned back toward the elevator to head down to the training area.

Vista was waiting for me, as expected. What I wasn't expecting was for her to still be in full costume, going through the motions of some kind of hand-to-hand combat form. She hadn't noticed my entrance, so I stayed quiet for a moment and watched as she let loose a flurry of punches at her target, an oversized humanoid mannequin that must've been seven feet tall. She spun to the side as if to dodge an attack, getting behind it and going for a kick to the backs of its knees.

She wasn't bad, actually. Compared to what I'd seen of the fighting here, she was probably pretty impressive for her age. Not anywhere near huntress-level, but solid for a beginner. Once I'd gotten a good impression of her general style, I stepped towards her. It still took her a few seconds to notice my approach, that was something we'd need to work on.

She noticed me mid-spin and stopper herself as she came back around. "Scatter! Sorry, I didn't notice you come in."

I took on what I was sure was a suitably mysterious teaching expression as I responded, "We'll work on that." Her head cocked to the side, but she didn't respond beyond a nod. I continued, "First off though, I want to get an idea of what you can do already. So… hit me."

I half-expected her to argue or be confused, but she ran forward with less than a second of hesitation and threw a well-executed punch. I stepped back out of the way, and she kept moving, closing the distance and trying again. I sidestepped, spun, and tapped her on the back of the head. "I'll hit back if I get the chance, keep your guard up."

She swore under her breath and spun clockwise, elbowing with her right arm and throwing another punch with her left, following up with a side kick. The blows kept coming, and I could tell that most people would have taken at least one hit by now - but like it or not, she was maybe thirteen with no enhanced strength, and even if she had been fighting a normal person her attacks probably wouldn't have done much.

She briefly switched to trying to get a grip on my wrists, but I pulled away from those as well. It would have been more effective against a normal person if she'd used it right, but it wasn't the answer I was looking for here.

She juked to the right before jumping to the left, getting behind me and pulling the same trick I'd seen her use on the mannequin moments earlier. I felt it coming and could have dodged, but I scattered around it instead.

She went sprawling, clearly not expecting the trick, and pushed herself up to her hands and knees before scampering backward to make some space. She paused for a second, unsure about where to go from there.

I decided to speak up. "You can use your powers, you know. Ideally, we'll combine them with your general fighting style so they can work together, but- woah."

I was cut off by the world going crazy. Like a funhouse mirror, the walls to my left and right _stretched_ upward and bent inward, making the ceiling higher and smaller as the entire room seemed to _twist_ at the top. I caught more motion in the corner of my eye and turned my head slightly to see the same thing happening behind me.

I was caught off-guard enough that I didn't notice Vista herself moving until my aura flared in warning. I hadn't really understood what she did when I'd seen her power described as 'large-scale, Manton-limited spatial warping,' but I was starting to get it now. Still kind of crazy, but I was getting a grasp. I decided that this was good enough to let the hit land, and did so - a second later, a kick impacted my knees. "Good work!" I said.

Vista gave me a look through her visor that I wasn't sure how to take. "Sure. Can we try again?"

"Umm… alright." She backed a surprising distance off, and we squared off again. This time, there was no messing around as the ground warped upward so that walls appeared behind me and to the sides and steadily grew higher, while in the same moment the distance between us jumped from several yards to no more than a couple of feet. This girl was _powerful_.

Space stopped warping, and she was already stepping in. I dodged backward from her first hit but had to jump to dodge the second, launching myself up and to the side, ricocheting off the opposite wall and vaulting the top. Vista wasted no time starting to drag them back down to ground level, and before she could I jumped down on the opposite side and waited.

After just a second, before the floor finished returning to its normal shape, she jumped over the barrier and dropped the four or so feet to the ground, landing right in front of me… or where I had been when she jumped. I rolled under her and sprang up behind her landing point, repeating my move from earlier and tapping her on the back again.

Vista was decent on the attack, but she didn't watch her flanks and her mobility could use some work. I could also already see some different ways to use her Semblance, as long as I was understanding it right.

I decided to let her keep going for a minute, though. From her reaction earlier, I didn't think she'd take it well for me to end the match right after landing a hit. She repeated the same series of moves she'd tried the first time I hit her, and I predicted the exact moment she overextended in order to move past her again. It looked like we'd need to work on the variety of her attacks as well.

I decided to make some distance and make her chase me a bit, but I was caught off-guard by space warping ahead of me though. A flare of my aura and a glance back showed that I had only managed to get a few feet away from her with a movement that should have taken me a good dozen yards away. Vista was already mid-punch, so I let it hit so we could move on. "Alright, that was better."

She seemed more satisfied with that one. What was the difference, though? "I can see where we'll need to start off. First things first, we're gonna teach you how to not get hit."

"No attacking yet?" She seemed pretty disappointed. Yeah, it was good that I'd realized what her intentions were, here.

"Not yet, no. You're not a huntress, you don't have Aura, and I couldn't give it to you. You can't take a hit like I can, so we're going to make sure you don't have to take any. I'm not sure I can get you up to bullet-timing, but we should be able to find other ways around it."

I saw her mouth 'bullet timing?' to herself before nodding slowly. I raised my arms into a combat stance and smiled. "You might want to start running."

Her eyes widened, and the floor in front of her shot up into a wall between us.

* * *

"So it's our turn to escort the newbie now, huh?"

Battery flicked her husband. "Be nice. Scatter, it's nice to actually meet you. Out-of-costume, I'm Samantha, and I think you've met Ethan already."

I shifted my mask slightly to see them around it, smiling in greeting. "Ruby. I heard we were doing a police ridealong this time? Are we going anywhere in particular, or…"

Assault answered, "Not this time, nope. Just introducing you to the BBPD, and outside of that, it's basically another patrol. We'll be following a few of their patrol cars along their routes and responding to whatever comes up, but overall it's just a normal patrol."

Made sense. I'd be meeting more people, but at least they were police. I'd worked with law enforcement before, so I figured it should be similar.

One of the PRT troopers drove us across the bridge in a big armored van this time, and we kept going into the actual city. There weren't as many people waiting as there were last time, and there wasn't any cheering either - it took me a minute to realize that they might not actually know we were inside.

The trooper called back through the partition, "Traffic's looking pretty thick, we've probably got about twenty minutes before we get there."

"Thank you!" I called back. She nodded into the mirror before opaque plastic slid into the gap, separating us. Both Assault and Battery took off their helmets, so I did the same. Battery was younger than I'd expected, no more than a year or so older than I was.

After a little bit of silence, I decided to try and start the conversation. "So, do we work with the police often?"

They both looked surprised for a second, but then Battery chuckled. "I'm going to keep forgetting you're not from around here. Yes, we work with them often. We're basically doing the same job, anyway. Did you not do the same thing where you came from?"

I responded, "Not really. We worked together sometimes, and I guess it's been more common lately, but the Huntsmen mainly went after the Grimm." Or occasionally other Huntsmen. That had been happening more often lately too. "When it came to things the police or even the military couldn't handle, we got sent in."

"That sounds… terrifying, to be honest. Like how we get sent up against the Endbringers. That kind of thing was your entire job?" Batt- Samantha asked.

"I mean, if I was in the area when a robbery went down, I'd help deal with it, but… yeah." I loved it when that happened. Brought back some fun memories. "It was pretty much just… normal, everyday life to me." Not that we ever had much of a 'normal' life, but that was beside the point.

"Endbringer attacks every few months are bad enough, but… how often did you go out?"

"Uh, every few days?" I responded. They looked at me agape. I explained, "Most Grimm really aren't that scary if you know what you're doing, and the really dangerous ones are rare enough that most people didn't have to deal with one more than every few months or so. It's been a little different lately since more aren't being spawned and the big ones are the only targets left, but it wasn't usually all that stressful. And there's always more Huntsmen, so we can kind of set our own hours, to a point anyway."

Ethan spoke up, "Out of curiosity, did you work alone, or…"

"I never did, but I know lots of people were different. Huntsmen get formed into four-member teams when they enter the second level of schooling and work with them until graduation. My team… never actually finished all that, but we've mostly stuck together up until a few months ago."

Battery gave me a concerned look. "Are they… alright?" What did she… oh!

"Oh, n- yes! They're fine. Weiss, my partner, went off to run her family's company after her father got arrested for… things, Blake got voted into the leadership of the new White Fang, and Yang wound up accepting a job teaching. I kept working with other teams, whenever the opportunity came up." I'd never liked the idea of going Hunting alone. Never been sure why, but the idea of something bad happening and nobody ever finding out what it was scared me enough that I put up with the hero-worship I got from most Huntsmen teams.

"Oh, well that's good. Glad to hear they're alright."

There was a bit of an awkward silence then, that I found myself breaking. "I wish they'd stuck around. I probably wouldn't be here if they had."

Where had that come from? I was doing fine here. Sure, I missed them, but…

The pair's expressions had changed as I said that. Assault's brow furrowed, and Battery took on a slightly pained look, as if I was reminding her of something. Assault was the first to speak though. "They're working on getting you back, right? I'm no TInker, but have they said anything about how long it might take?"

I shook my head. "Dragon had no idea. I'll find a way eventually but until then… well, I guess I'm here, doing what I can. I've been getting used to dealing with new teams over the past few months, I can do this too." I paused for a second. "I'm not the only one dealing with a changing team, so if you all can do it than I can too."

Battery smiled a bit, but Assault frowned. "Yeah, I guess so. All this alternate universe stuff, Velocity leaving... it's a lot to take in."

Oh, right. Here I was talking about my team separating when I was directly responsible for doing the same thing to this team. Sure, it was only one person, but still. "Yeah… I'm sorry about Velocity. I guess his leaving is kind of my fault."

Assault prepared to speak up again, but Battery cut him off. "Don't worry, it's fine. He's only headed to Boston, and it's not like we're never going to see him again. We would have lost Challenger anyway, so it's not like much has changed."

Assault looked like he wanted to say something, but ended up staying silent and I didn't push. The van started pulling to a stop, and we replaced our masks before the partition opened again, saving me from awkwardly responding.

The trooper called through the gap. "You all masked back there?" At a confirmation from Battery, she continued, "Alright, popping the back. This has been Pinto taxi service, thank you for flying with us!" She picked up a joking tone near the end, but as usual, I didn't get the reference.

Assault's typical grin had returned, and he replied, "Thanks for the ride, Pinto. We'll find our own way back."

"Aww, that hurts! You might make somebody think you weren't a fan of my driving!"

"You're right, I might."

She laughed, rolling up the window as she restarted her van and began pulling away. Battery was giving her husband a dirty look, but I barely noticed as I heard a commotion behind me and turned to find maybe half a dozen police officers exiting the building and looking directly at me. The leader, a big guy with a cap and a blonde beard, held out a hand in greeting. "So you're our new cape, huh? You've kicked up quite a stir."

Behind him, the officers that had followed him out had expressions ranging from impressed to annoyed. As I hesitantly stepped forward to greet them, I began to realize that today would be starting out with little more than schmoozing. Again. Was this all we did as heroes? I'd seen exactly one fight since I got here, and I knew from the incident reports that people were getting hurt on our watch.

Surely, if we put some of the efforts we had placed into PR into actually stopping criminals, this city would be a safer place, right?

* * *

 **I feel like my chapters have started getting longer. If I'd written these scenes a year ago, I'm pretty sure they'd be half this length. Not totally sure why that is, to be honest. As is, I've had to add an extra chapter to this arc to keep from winding up with a random 5k-word chapter at the end. This oughta be... interesting if it continues.**

 **The next chapter is (somehow) like two-thirds complete already, so I'm gonna try to post it on Halloween. If I manage it, then I'm going to take November off of this story and do NaNoWriMo - _not_ the full 50k words, that's probably never gonna happen, but instead aiming for a chapter every day, written for a sort of prequel-series to Scatterer that would bridge the gap between canon and the beginning of the story. With more volumes of RWBY coming out, I want to make it obvious what is and isn't canon - I've mentioned before that everything up through Volume 4 is canon to this story, and that much of Volume 5 actually lined up fairly well with what I had planned, but Volume 6's trailer looks to be diverging pretty heavily so I'd like to distinguish the two. I'll probably be posting the chapters once or twice a week to give me time to look them over. I've never done something like this before, so let me know what you think!**

 **And... yeah. Roots 2-5 hopefully coming on October 31, 2-6 probably mid-December. See you then!**

 **PSA EDIT: Do not look at any user bios.** **I don't fully understand the details, but there's some kind of script running on certain 'infected' profiles that's causing problems and apparently doing something to backup emails? The current top post on /r/fanfiction explains it better. Regardless, be careful out there.**


	12. Roots 2-5

**Roots 2.5**

The masks-on alarm sounded through the elevator door, and after a few moments the door opened up. Vista was nowhere in sight, and neither was anyone else.

It was only after stepping into the room that I noticed a girl sitting quietly on a couch that was pushed up against the wall, dressed in solid black with a woman's face etched into her mask. She looked up from the Scroll in her hand, and though I couldn't see her eyes she looked to be watching me.

"Oh, hi. Shadow Stalker, right? Uh… is Vista down here?"

She huffed. "The runt? Upstairs, I think. Dragged Clock and Kid with her."

Runt? Huh. I thought back to my mental map of the building. "In the cafeteria?"

"Hell if I know. Thought keeping an eye on her was your job, not mine."

Shadow Stalker wasn't one for second impressions either, it seemed. "Not exactly, but okay. Thank you for your help."

She huffed and looked down to her Scroll- no, they were called phones here - and proceeded to ignore me. I turned and re-entered the elevator, assuming that I wouldn't be getting any more help from the Wards dome.

I was thinking I'd have to ask somebody about her. I couldn't quite figure out why, but the impression I got from her was similar to the one I got from Raven _._ A sort of automatic disdain for everything surrounding them.

A search of the cafeteria didn't reveal any Wards, and their boss in the PRT, a man named Renick, hadn't seen the trio either. After a good fifteen minutes of looking, my questions about Shadow Stalker slipped away as I finally found them in, of all places, the PRT building's gym. It wasn't nearly as impressive as the setup on the Rig, but it had a small boxing ring, which they were currently occupying. Well, Vista was occupying it, anyway. Clockblocker and Kid Win were a little too busy groaning on the floor to be occupying much of anything.

Vista noticed me coming this time. "Hey, Scatter!"

I laughed as I responded, "How'd this happen?"

She seemed pretty happy, for once. "I was talking about our sparring, and they wanted to see how well it was working."

Clockblocker sat up. "I can confirm, it seems to be working!"

"Was this with or without powers?" I asked.

"Without," Vista replied, ducking under the ropes at the edge of the ring and jumping down. "We're not supposed to use them in here."

Kid Win climbed to his feet, bracing himself on the raised floor of the ring until he found his balance. "So, uhh…" He shook his head. "Can you teach me how to do that too?"

"Same here," said Clockblocker. "I never even touched her, couldn't have done anything even with my powers. How did you manage that in a single training session?"

Vista and I traded glances, and I saw that she was waiting for me to answer. "She was already pretty good at it, and I can tell you from experience that normal combat seems sluggish after spending a few hours trying to dodge a speedster." Not even touching him was pretty impressive though. How had she managed that? "As for training… sure, I guess. You want to join us at the PHQ?"

They both- well, Kid Win grinned. I assumed Clock was too, from his voice. They both whooped, attracting some extra attention from the handful of seemingly-everpresent PRT troopers in the room.

I, caught between not wanting to interrupt but wanting to get things moving, got their attention with a hand. "Alright, um, let's get moving."

They looked surprised, and Clock was the one to speak up. "Oh, now? Umm… sure!" Kid, looking to him, nodded along as Vista gave the pair a funny look.

That was… odd. A thought occurred to me, and I responded. "Okay, you three head up to the roof, and I'll meet you there in a couple minutes."

They happily started moving toward the locker rooms. I, meanwhile, stepped back towards the elevator, going down instead of up. The ride back down to the Wards HQ was just as fast as the first time, and I found Shadow Stalker missing when I arrived. That… was probably a good thing, to be honest.

A quick check of the roster confirmed my suspicions. The pair were scheduled for a patrol in half an hour. I guessed they were planning on taking my offer as permission to skip out. I guessed they would still get in trouble for it, but maybe they thought they could deflect some of it

It almost felt hypocritical to get mad at them for this, since it was pretty much exactly the kind of thing team RWBY would have tried back at Beacon, but still. We had thought we knew what we were doing, and it was only after facing some of the real threats we were up against that we learned our success was more due to luck than anything.

Of course, I understood not wanting to go, if their patrols were as pointless as mine seemed to be. Extra training might actually be more useful if that was even their plan. What to do…

Several minutes later, I thought, inspired by, of all things, my time traveling to Haven. More thinking turned it into a full idea. I'd have to move before they suspected anything, though.

* * *

"Go for Challenger."

"Hi! I've got an idea, not sure if I can pull it off, wanted to check with you first."

"...I'm sorry, who is this? You're not in my contacts."

Oh, right. Still had to figure out how the phones here worked. I had decided a while ago not to mention the full hour I had spent trying to figure out how this thing worked when I first got it. "Oh, sorry. I'm Scatter. Clockblocker and Kid Win were wanting some training instead of patrolling, and I was wondering if we could combine the two."

"Ah, they tried to skip out on that again?" His tone was resigned, as if this were a regular occurrence.

I responded, "Yeah, afraid so. How often does that happen?"

"Too often," Challenger chuckled. "I'll bring it up next time I see them. What'd you have in mind, training-wise?" He sounded intrigued, but it was hard to tell without being able to see him.

"Vista and I would shadow them on the patrol. We could get some practice done outside of the gym, and the boys would join us once they were done."

"Sounds good. Actually, if you're working with them off-base, do you want some help? You could probably use somebody who knows the city, and I could pull some attention off you like Dauntless did if it comes up."

DId he expect it to come up? I guessed he would know best, there. "Sounds good. Meet you at the bridge building in a few minutes?"

"See you there." He ended the call, saving me the trouble of figuring out how.

Alright, now we had a plan. I walked out of the empty office, clearly one that somebody used regularly, closed the door behind me, and headed for the roof. I'd needed somewhere quiet fast, and this was the first one I'd found.

The Wards were waiting for me on the top floor, looking pretty bored after the ten minutes I'd kept them waiting. I'd ducked into the office to avoid a tour group that I'd heard coming through looking at the views earlier, and the Wards would have been right in their path. It had probably looked like I'd set them up for that, but they still perked up when they saw me coming in.

"Alright kiddos, let's head out!" Vista's expression dropped a little, defaulting to neutrality. It was harder than it looked to keep from annoying her with that kind of thing. It was usually pretty easy to fix, though. "Vista, how fast can you get us to the PHQ bridge?"

As expected, she perked back up at the opportunity to make herself useful. She smirked and responded, "My record's two minutes and twenty-one seconds, but I can usually make it in less than five."

"Alright, let's go! Challenger's waiting for us, so we should hurry." Clock and Kid both paused at that but kept moving. Yeah, they caught the subtext there. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed, it, actually. I guess the emotive training I'd heard about us having to take worked pretty well.

We stepped outside, and Vista immediately raised an arm and started running. Within moments, the entire block of rooftops was no more than a few dozen yards across, and the next block over was tilted towards us, stretching over the street in a way that didn't look like it could possibly be safe. Kid dropped his hoverboard, jumping onto it as it hovered back up, and flew a few blocks ahead.

If I had my mental map right, there were maybe three miles between the PRTHQ and our destination. The way we were moving, from one empty, partially compressed rooftop to another, turned it into less than a quarter of that. The city practically flew by underneath us, and, just as Vista had claimed, we found ourselves dropping down to the ground across the street from the bridge in just a hair over four minutes.

There was some light applause from the gathered crowd - not nearly as big as the one from my first day, but still big enough. The Wards jumped into it easily, expertly tackling most of the crowd and, maybe even accidentally, took almost all the heat off of me.

Not everyone, though. It was only a couple of minutes before a little girl, no older than seven or eight, shuffling up to me and hesitantly holding out a little notebook and a marker.

She clearly wasn't going to say anything, so I overrode my internal squeeing, knelt down, and grabbed her marker. "Hi, there! What's your name?" I caught cameras pointing our way out of the corner of my eye, and intentionally put them out of my mind.

She went very still, not out of fear, but more… surprise. "E- Erin," she spoke, in a voice that was barely even a whisper. She was _adorable_.

"Hi, Erin. I'm Ru-" I cut myself off. I was starting to hate this whole identity thing. "I'm Scatter. Are you having a good vacation?" It was a guess, but a good one. I could see her parents watching carefully from a few yards away, and tourists were recognizable just about anywhere.

Her eyes went wide. "Yeah!"

I finished signing, adding a little flair by capping the 'R' with a hastily-drawn rose, as close to the one on my mask as I could get it with the marker, and handed them back to her. I smiled, still unsure if it actually mattered, and said, "I'm glad to hear it. I think your parents are waiting for you over there, you might want to get back to them."

Erin nodded excitedly, turned around and ran back to her parents, waving the book back and forth through the air. I saw her mother catch her and swing her in the air as her father looked to me and mouthed 'thank you.'

A flicker of shimmering silver in the corner of my eye drew my attention away, and I saw Challenger coming in for a landing. Parts of the Wards' autograph lines converged on him as his forcefield platform vanished and he dropped the last three feet or so to the ground across from me.

After a moment I heard a crackle as the communicator in my ear activated and a voice I didn't recognize spoke. "Challenger wants me to tell you that your group should start moving along. This many heroes in one place tends to clog things up. Challenger will stay behind for a few minutes, while you four move along into the city."

The earpiece communicator worked pretty much exactly like the ones in the movies, so I slipped my hand under my hood and pressed the button. Then I realized that I didn't know any of the protocols or whatever for talking on the radio, but I'd already pressed the button. "Uh, Roger, understood. We're moving out."

There was a short pause before he responded. "There's no need for the radio procedure Scatter, you can talk normally." I heard the man's voice catch a little, and as the Wards began making their way towards me I saw Kid's shoulders shaking as he poorly suppressed laughter.

I turned around, not really knowing what else anyone was expecting from me, and started making my way out of the crowd. The Wards followed close behind, and the crowd started falling away once we left the Boardwalk. By the time we were a few blocks in, the handful of tourists following behind us who hadn't known where we were headed had noticed their surroundings decline and turned back.

At the Ward's prompting, we made sure not to leave that street until they were back to the Boardwalk. Very few people were dumb enough to start something with no less than four heroes within line-of-sight, but that changed if we left the area.

Within a few minutes, Challenger flew overhead, and a shout from Vista drew his attention. "Sorry about that, wasn't expecting that big of a crowd for an unannounced patrol," Challenger said as he came in for a landing. He looked over towards Clock and Kid, who were busy looking as non-suspicious as possible. "I heard you two volunteered for some extra training on your patrol! Glad to hear you're being so responsible for once!"

Nobody was fooled by his tone, least of all the boys in question. They assumed suitably ashamed postures and muttered apologies, and Challenger 'hmm'd and nodded. He looked to be suppressing some laughter as he did it though, and the Wards perked back up as soon as he turned around. From that, and from Vista's shaking head, I got the impression that this wasn't exactly an uncommon thing.

Challenger spoke up again a few moments later. "Wards, how about you move ahead a little? Don't get too far, but you can do some running on your own for a bit."

The boys practically glowed with excitement, and even Vista had a smile on her face. "A Wards-only patrol through the Docks? Really?"

He held up a hand, and they quieted. "Stay in contact, and within a few blocks. If you see trouble, call us and wait for our approval before engaging, and _stay together_. Understood?"

Vista's attempt at a mature 'Yes, sir!' was drowned out by Clock and Kid's cheers, and she eventually gave up and followed after them, warping space to catch up and move the group along even faster. Within seconds, they were out of sight.

Challenger chuckled. "I see the Wards have already attached themselves to you."

I gave him a confused look, then remembered my mask and spoke instead. "What do you mean? This is only, like, the second time I've met Clock or Kid."

"You haven't seen much of it yet, but it won't take long," he said. "The same thing happened back when Velocity joined up - he was in the military, had some fighting experience, so the Wards that were here at the time jumped all over him for a few weeks."

Made sense. "I noticed they were a little starved for action. I figured some training and sparring would help with that." If their reaction to that little bit of independence was any judge, they really needed it.

Challenger nodded. "Yeah, I think it will do them some good. I… would be careful not to do anything too crazy though. If you can honestly call it self-defense, that would probably be best." He paused, continuing more hesitantly a second later. "I'm… not sure if this is a sensitive topic, but from what you've mentioned about your past, I got the impression that you've been fighting… for a long time."

He watched me carefully as if to gauge my reaction. I was more confused than anything though. "Yeah, ever since I was a kid. Why?"

When he responded, his voice had changed. Not so much hesitation as… wariness? "That's the kind of thing that the Youth Guard are watching for. If they learn that the Wards are being combat-trained by somebody who grew up in and supports that kind of environment? It wouldn't go well for us, to put it lightly."

I had several questions bubbling up in response to that. Why did it matter who was training them? What was so different about the 'environment I grew up in?' I held back though, thinking of Challenger's comment about it being a sensitive subject, and chose the safest option. "What can I do to make sure that doesn't happen? If what I've seen from them over the past few days says anything, they'll need this sooner or later, or they'll wind up fighting when they shouldn't be and getting themselves hurt."

Even I was itching for a fight by this point, after a solid week of nothing but schmoozing and patrols. The Wards had been here for years, and as far as I could tell, they were being kept away from fighting in general.

His response was immediate. "Talk to Piggot. Brockton Bay is one of the most dangerous cities on the East Coast, and like it or not our Wards get involved in more fights than virtually any other team in the Protectorate." _This_ was more fighting than anywhere else? "She's been negotiating with the Youth Guard for years, she knows what they will and won't accept in regard to training and resources. We can get away with a little, and she tends to not look too closely if nobody finds out and we don't tell her, but I recommend you check with her before doing anything.

Ugh. More bureaucracy. I was starting to feel for Ozpin and Glynda, they must've had to deal with this kind of thing all the time. Still though, if it was what I had to do, then I'd do it. "Alright, I guess I can do that."

He nodded, and we continued on. Four blocks ahead of us, I saw the roofs on either side of the street stretch towards each other, and all three Wards jumped across the gap. It must've been a good four feet across when they jumped, but Challenger didn't seem too worried.

I found myself considering the conversations I'd been having with my new teammates over the last few days. There'd been quite a few common threads, which made sense given the circumstances, but the one that stuck out at that moment was my past, and how I operated. I'd been working as a Huntress since I was sixteen, and I'd been training at some level since I was _nine_. That wasn't all that special for Huntsman families like mine, even if most Huntsmen-in-training started in the local academies at age thirteen.

The Wards were apparently kept away from combat as much as possible, yet I was younger than Vista when I killed my first Grimm. Miss Militia was upset at the idea of killing villains, but I had killed people relatively often in defense of others. Assault and Battery balked at the idea of constant, dangerous fighting, but that had been my entire lifestyle before now.

I was going to have to admit that the habits and beliefs that I'd developed back home just didn't apply here. Maybe it had to do with the Grimm, maybe it was just Semblances being more recent here, but the culture here was totally different, and it wasn't about to change on my account.

Whether the culture was different or not though, people were the same at the core, and kids with Semblances needed to use them in any world. I could see the effects this lifestyle was having on the Wards and where they were going to wind up without something changing, and they needed this. This world didn't have anything approaching Beacon, so I was going to need to take its place for these kids. Bureaucracy, PR, and all.

I could do it. Probably.

A thought came to me, and I turned to look back at Challenger, smiling. "How do you think Piggot would feel about a surprise sparring match for those kids? There's probably some abandoned warehouses out here, right? Keep everything out of sight?"

He paused, then chuckled. "I'll radio in."

* * *

 **Holy crap, two chapters in two weeks. I don't know how I did this. I already had a solid two-thirds of this done by the time I posted 2-4, but still. Who am I and what did I do with the real me?**

 **This'll be the last chapter until December, most likely, with The Salem War (the prequel) coming out biweekly in the interim. It'll have much shorter chapters, though. There'll be an overarching story, but it'll be more of a snippet anthology than something resembling this. It'll probably release on some combination of Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but even I** **won't know which until I try it. It might take a week or so to stabilize.**

 **I don't feel like this one is as good as I'd like it to be, especially for how important it is to the overall plot, but it's good enough. Now to take a few light days before beginning the daily 4-600 that'll be required for my mini-version of NaNoWriMo.**

 **As always, thanks for reading, I'll take any criticism I can get, and I'll see you next time!**


	13. Roots 2-6

**Roots 2.6**

"Piggot here. What's your plan?"

Straight to the point. I guessed she was a busy woman. I responded, mostly making up a plan as I went along, "Challenger calls the Wards back in at the tail end of their patrol, tells them we've got a scenario set up in one of these buildings. Maybe a fake drug bust or something. I hide inside, after checking it and making sure it's safe, Challenger sends them in, shuts the door, I jump them, and it turns into a friendly spar with a goal they have to retrieve as soon as they realize what's happening."

"Understood. Why are you doing it outside of the Rig's gym?"

I wasn't expecting that question, and it took me a second to find a response. "Because it changes things up. If they keep fighting in the same place over and over again, they'll never learn to fight elsewhere."

To be honest, I was making that up. It made sense, but it wasn't something I'd thought over ahead of time. Her pause before replying could have meant she was buying it, but it was hard to say without a video feed.

She finally responded, "I understand you sparred with Vista yesterday, correct?"

I was a little surprised she knew about that. "Yeah, I did. She wanted-"

"It doesn't matter," Director Piggot interrupted. "You're aware that entering one of those buildings is technically illegal?"

"Technically, sure, but you've got to have some buildings out here that nobody cares about." That had never been true in Vale before, but with the Grimm dying out and people moving away it was happening more and more. I imagined it would be true here, too.

"Fine. I'll allow your training session this time, with two caveats; you and Challenger take care to avoid civilian witnesses, and you come to me with any future 'training ideas' ahead of time from now on. I also want to talk with you about your training with Vista, come to my office once you're done out there."

"I was already planning on it. I'll be there in… an hour?" I responded. Pretty much what Challenger had warned me about, I could handle it. I was surprised that she was going with this with so little argument, though.

"Agreed. Have console find a building that you can safely use." The phone clicked, and I realized the call had ended from her end.

Perfect! I looked up to Challenger, who had been listening in to the speakerphone with nobody else nearby to overhear. "I'll go get the Wards if you talk to console." He nodded, raising his hand to his comm unit, and I ran off. Last I'd seen, they were running _this_ way...

The building was dark, dusty, grimy, and completely perfect for our purposes. It had two floors and a gap in the center of the second, with a crane system in the ceiling, built almost like an arcade claw machine on a massive scale. The power was out, and the short windows on the upper floor, a few feet below the ceiling, weren't bright enough to do more than highlight the shadows that danced over every surface. Stairs connected the two floors at each corner, and wood and metal debris littered the ground.

I had chosen the crane for my hiding place. Instead of a claw, it had a magnet as big around as a car's tire mounted on the end of the cable, heavy enough that my added weight barely shifted it. I sat over the gap, forty feet above the ground, watching and waiting for the doors to open and my prey to enter.

I didn't feel much like a superhero, but then I guess that was kind of the point. I'd tucked my cloak inside the inner portion of my costume, which was _super_ uncomfortable but gave off the villainous impression I was looking for even better. As much as I hated to admit it, without the bright red of my cloak, the black, gray, and much darker red of my leggings, skirt, and top wound up looking fairly edgy. It had almost served as camouflage among the Huntsmen, but I _had_ to stand out here, and I felt like this gave off the wrong impression.

While I waited, I thought strategy. For a lack of other idea's I'd based the game off of Beacon's initiation - they didn't necessarily need to beat me, they just needed to find the relic and get it to Challenger, outside of the building. Vista was more or less a known quantity - she was clever enough to improvise, but a couple hours of sparring was enough to get a solid grasp of her metaphorical toolkit. Kid Win was an inventor - and it still amazed me that those kinds of Semblances were so common here - and I was pretty sure he only had his hoverboard, armor, and pistols with him. He was probably the least threatening person here, but I'd be keeping an eye on him anyway. If fighting Merlot and Watts had taught me anything, it was that the inventors tended to have tricks hidden away for special occasions.

The biggest issue was Clockblocker. As I understood it, his power meant that if he touched me, the fight was probably over. Taking him down without touching him would be a little tricky, but far from difficult. I had several possible strategies in mind for dealing with him already.

This was still a spar, of course. None of the Wards had Aura, so I was unarmed and I'd be holding back quite a bit. I wouldn't be letting them off easy, though.

The door opened, light streaming into the room, and I heard Challenger's voice coming through as the kids entered. "...don't know exactly who or what is in here, so you'll be going in blind aside from your goal."

"Sure, we have _no clue_ who's in here. None at all," Clockblocker cut him off.

That seemed like a good moment to drop in. I stood, stretched, and stepped off the magnet. I scattered as I hit the ground to silence my landing, and stood slowly. The four were still in the doorway, with the Wards looking back towards Challenger, who was still standing near the doorway. He didn't react to my appearance, but there was no way he hadn't see me.

He responded, "You never know what you might run into during an assignment. You know what you're looking for, make sure to keep your eyes open."

I took that as my cue to unleash the best Weiss-inspired, Cinder-approved evil cackle I could manage. The Wards spun around to face me as I announced, "Keep your eyes open indeed! You Wards should be keeping a closer eye on your surroundings! I could have done anything while your-"

I was cut off by a snicker, which set off a chuckle, which cascaded into all three Wards laughing and only Vista trying to reign it in.

This wasn't meant to be funny! I huffed, losing the admittedly over-the-top voice. "Alright, if that's how it's gonna be." I scattered, throwing forward my hand in the process and signaling Challenger to shut the door. He figured out what I was going for, and the effect worked. The door boomed shut, the light went out, and I rushed the trio.

Vista, trying to stifle her laughter, saw me coming and dived to the side, throwing her hand toward the wall to my left. Clockblocker saw her dodge, looked towards me, and swore while stumbling back to the right. Kid Win, doubled over as he was, saw none of this.

My boot met his stomach and he flew five feet backward to slam against the metal door, gasping for breath. He was wearing armor, I figured he'd be fine.

Clockblocker regained his footing beside me, lunging as soon as he was stable. I scattered around him, reappearing on the other side, and he caught himself again. I had seen him coming, but that got me some useful information - my Aura wouldn't warn me of his touch, so it would be very possible for him to catch me off-guard. He lunged again, and I stepped back towards the center of the room, his fingers passing inches from my stomach before he caught himself and swung yet again.

I could see his plan, and it was a pretty good one. He figured I couldn't risk touching him, so he was trying to keep my attention. Against most other opponents, it would have been a good strategy, but not here. I scattered back towards the center of the room, putting a good forty feet between us in a second, and buying myself time.

I saw space warping between us, collapsing the distance between me and him while stretching the distance between me and everything else. Vista, having not quite reached the second floor yet, was nonetheless watching the fight and manipulating things to Clockblocker's advantage. Kid Win was picking himself up at the door, still gasping for breath but starting to move for his dropped hoverboard. I could see the synergy these three could have, with Vista controlling the battlefield, Kid skirmishing across it with his lasers, and Clock catching people once the others had boxed them in.

They weren't really making use of it, though. Kid grabbed his hoverboard and pistols but chose to just open fire without any attempt at strategizing with his teammates. I dodged, scattering around the occasional beam that would have otherwise hit but primarily focusing on moving upward. I jumped to the upper floor, vaulted the railing, planted my feet, and launched myself toward Vista, who was just now finishing her power-abbreviated climb up the stairs.

Vista barely had time to gasp, but she was already reacting, tumbling backward and executing a painful-looking back roll down the stairs as she put up a barrier behind her to seal them off. I stretched my aura through the stretched-out floor, disappearing from one side and reforming from stray petals on the other. Moving through solid objects was tricky, but it was easier when they weren't quite airtight. Vista had made good use of the seconds it had bought her, and was well on her way to crossing the room by the time I made it through.

Kid Win was giving her a bit of covering fire, flying low in her direction as if to pick her up, but she wasn't even looking in his direction. From the footsteps, Clockblocker was behind me, trying to catch me off-guard again while the other two held my attention, but I was outrunning him.

I rushed _through_ Vista, making her stumble in surprise, and caught Kid Win just as he was shifting his weight to make a turn. I moved past him as well, catching him with a backhand to the stomach that knocked the wind out of him again while simultaneously snatching his pistol. I hit the wall, flipped as I rebounded upward, aimed at Clockblocker upside-down in midair, and was sorely disappointed when the pistol just started screeching at me instead of firing.

I landed, sliding the pistol across the ground toward the back of the warehouse, and rushed Vista again, not giving them a moment to breathe. I didn't get the slowed perceptions that some speedsters did - the handful of seconds this fight had lasted already were just as rushed for me as it was for them - but I was used to fighting at this speed, and they, clearly, were not. Vista tried to duck under my attack, but she was still moving way too slow to actually manage it and I still caught her around the waist with an elbow, shoving her to the ground as I dashed by.

It wasn't often that I sparred with someone like this - typically, they'd go down when their Aura dropped and that would be my win. On the rare occasion that I was fighting someone without Aura, I typically wasn't holding back this much. It meant that even though I was expecting it, it still surprised me a little when they kept getting back up. Kid Win had recovered his wind, had reboarded his hoverboard, and was flying after his pistol again.

I decided to let him go, for the moment. They still needed some chance to find their target. I'd go after him once I dealt with Clockblocker. Time to see how he dealt with somebody using his power against him. He saw me running for him and put his hands to either side as he approached me.

I scattered slightly as I ran, not quite to the point of intangibility but still able to disappear and reappear _parts_ of me. The area around the inner lining of the back of my costume dematerialized, reappearing in my hands at the moment before we made contact. I juked to the right, directly into his waiting hand, and wrapped my cloak tight around it as I phased through.

I carried on, and a glance behind me showed the cloak frozen in mid-air. Clockblocker nearly pulled his shoulder out of socket trying to escape the hold it had around his arm, and I heard some quiet swearing from his direction when he realized what had happened. He'd be occupied for a while.

Next up, Vista. I figured Kid had the best chance of finding their target where it was hidden, and Vista was the bigger threat anyway. I ran towards her, not using my Semblance to see how she'd react, and she had me boxed in within moments. It barely took me a second to get out, but by the time I had, she'd brought the second floor down to where she could get to it and was watching the ground floor as if looking for something. Good, she was still trying to find the target.

I refrained from scattering, choosing to simply jump directly to the second level. Vista was backing away, arms raised in a defensive stance, but her jaw was clenched and she had a joyless smile on her face. She knew she was going to lose, but she was planning on fighting anyway.

I admired the determination, but her attitude could use some work.

Kid Win flew through the roof behind me and I intentionally didn't react. His first shot missed entirely, and his second would only have grazed me if I hadn't leaned the quarter-inch to the left it took to dodge. His third was more on target, and I decided to tank it in order to save him the embarrassment of hitting his own teammate. His bolts were designed to barely hurt normal humans, they did practically nothing to my Aura.

I decided that some advice would be a good idea right about now. I wouldn't make it _too_ obvious, though. I let loose another evil cackle and called out, "Foolish Wards! One teammate incapacitated, the second almost shooting the third!" Oh yeah, that was perfect _._ Kid stopped shooting in surprise as I continued, "One might think they'd forgotten about their original task here!"

Kid inhaled hard behind me, and I saw Vista exchange a glance with him over my shoulder. He totally had forgotten about their goal here. He flew away a few seconds later - still firing at me, but now aiming high enough that the shots went over Vista's head when I let them pass through me.

Vista didn't attack, instead deciding to speak. "I guess you're not going to tell me where you've hidden this thing, right?"

"Heh, you guess right. It really shouldn't be that bad, this place is pretty empty."

"Oh well." I saw her glance below us and heard Kid's hoverboard moving around on the lower floor. She was trying to stall me and give Kid more time. I decided to let it happen for a bit, to give them some kind of a chance. He could fly, he'd find it soon enough, but it still might take him a bit in the dark. "I guess we're fighting now, huh."

"Guess so."

She didn't wait for me to make the first move. Space warped away from us, the walls stretching away in every direction as she stepped backward to put space between us. I shot forward and aimed a kick at her side, which she dodged by rolling to her right. She came up ten feet away and created a ramp to clamber up, jumping down the other side before expanding the ramp to either side.

As she did, I jumped after her, running normally to give her a chance to react and see what she'd do. The ramp was steep enough to be tricky to a civilian, but I ran up it with ease only to see it extending ahead of me. It was moving pretty fast, and by the time I got around the expanding rim, the inside of her newly-created structure had expanded to be big enough to move around in. Vista was busy making an exit at the back, but I caught up to her before she could get out and tapped her on the shoulder. "Call that a knockout. Good work on the evasion, though."

Before she could get out a reply, I started running back towards the central area. I was hearing Kid's pistols going off, which probably wasn't a good sign for me. Sure enough, once I got to the inner railing, I saw him attempting to blast through the doors, his target in hand. I hopped the railing once again and launched myself off the lip, catching myself on the magnet before hitting the ground hard enough that Kid heard it over his gunfire. He looked back, spotted me coming, and flew back up, apparently trying to find another way out.

I wasn't going to give him that chance. I Scattered toward him, deciding against slowing myself down, only to hear footsteps charging me from the side. I jerked away, taking more care than was probably needed to avoid getting frozen as Clockblocker placed himself directly between me and Kid. I hadn't expected his power to wear off that quickly, he must have gotten lucky. My cloak was behind him, and not really close enough to grab even if I thought he'd fall for the same trick twice.

He was underestimating my speed, I figured I could get away with just rushing by him, but I decided against it in order to give them a chance. Instead, I faked a rush to his left before running by him to his right, side-rolling out of his reach just before he managed to grab me, and rushing toward where Kid's hoverboard was moving toward one of the windows. Clockblocker shouted a warning, and Kid looked back to see me.

I don't know what went through his head, but the moment he saw me coming, he gasped and dove headfirst off his board, falling ten feet to the second floor. His board kept going, slammed into the wall, and fall to the ground itself a moment later.

I was kneeling next to him in a second, checking to make sure he was okay, but it looked like his armor had taken the worst of the fall. "Are you alright?"

He coughed hard and inhaled harder; it looked like the wind had been knocked out of him. Once he got his breathing back to normal, he gave a thumbs-up.

I chuckled lightly, holding up the glowing Dust round that he'd found on top of the magnet and dropped on the floor next to him. "I'm pretty sure that means you lose, though."

He gave another thumbs-up, and I saw him smiling in breathless laughter.

* * *

"Director Piggot?" I knocked on the doorframe, the door itself sitting slightly ajar.

"Come in, Scatter. Shut the door behind you."

I stepped through the door, easing it closed, turned around, and- woah. She didn't look great. It was subtle, but her skin was half a shade paler than the last time I saw her and I could see the barest hint of tension in her face and hands. Whatever it was, it was either minor enough to be ignored or, more likely, she was hiding the full extent of the problems.

I didn't want to speak up first, but it took a minute for the Director to actually start talking. The way she was watching me was hard enough to read that I couldn't figure out what she was after. When she did finally speak, it was sudden enough to catch me off-guard. "Scatter, why are you going so far out of your way to train these Wards?"

It took me a second to realize what she'd asked, but I had an answer immediately. "Because they need it. I needed it when I was their age, and if I hadn't gotten it then I would have been dead a long time ago."

"This isn't your world, Scatter. Our children don't need to fight to survive."

"Most of them don't. Hunt- Parahuman children do. I've seen it in powered kids from my world, and I'm seeing it here. If you keep them isolated and away from the fighting, then they get antsy and things start going wrong."

"We're aware of that phenomenon, and we've taken steps to avoid it. It doesn't need to be solved by throwing the Wards into the middle of combat-"

"You're right, it doesn't," I interrupted. Piggot looked annoyed but allowed me to continue. "That's not what I'll be teaching them to do. They'll know how to fight if they _do_ end up in close-combat, but I'm not going to throw them up against armed criminals without a reliable means of defending themselves. I might be used to dealing with people that have Auras, but I haven't forgotten that the Wards lack them. If I'm not convinced that they fully grasp the danger of close-combat, then I won't be teaching them any."

She responded, "Then what will you be teaching them?"

"Firstly, evasion and retreat. Making sure that they won't get hit if they do get into a fight." I'd try to teach them how to aim-dodge, but that didn't seem like the smartest thing to bring up right now. "Next up will be defensive fighting, disarming tactics, covering tactics, collaborative-"

"Enough." The Director paused, apparently thinking it over. She was her typical unreadable self, but I noticed the small nod that came with her final decision. "Fine. I'll allow the training, so long as it's conducted under supervision and it doesn't interfere with their other responsibilities. Schedule time in the training center this week, I'll find someone to keep an eye on you."

I nodded. "Yes, Ma'am." That was easier than expected. A little too easy, in fact. I suspected that she had more at play here than I knew about, and that was a little worrying. "Director, I did have one more question. It doesn't have anything to do with this, but-"

"Spit it out, Scatter."

I continued hesitantly, a little worried to be calling her out, like this. "I heard that my acceptance into the Protectorate moved a lot faster than that kind of thing normally does. My power testing got moved up too, and it felt like they were trying to get me through it as quickly as possible. I'm also hearing about Velocity suddenly being transferred out when it was going to be Challenger until I got here. I don't really understand how stuff here works yet, but from what I do understand, it sounds like you were involved in both of those decisions." I watched her face carefully, but she kept her face perfectly neutral. "If it's okay to ask, what's going on with that?"

She stayed quiet for a few moments, again thinking things through before responding. "You're quick, I'll give you that. Yes, I had other motives involved there, but suffice to say that I felt you would be a boon to this city and that, thanks to your origins, I had to do some politicking to keep you here."

I wasn't sure what politicking was, but I got the idea. There was absolutely more to it than that, but she was telling the truth and I was happy that she'd at least given me _something_. "Thank you. I'll keep you updated in the Wards."

"Please do. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get Velocity's transfer finalized."

I stood. "Yes, Ma'am."

* * *

 **This one wound up a bit longer than expected, mostly because I actually didn't have this fight planned out ahead of time for once. I didn't know how it was going to end until I wrote the last paragraph, which was interesting, to say the least. Probably not something I'm going to try again if I can help it.**

 **This is the last primary chapter of the arc - you'll get two interludes like for the last arc, with a slightly different format for the first one. I'm going to try for December 8th, but no promises.**

 **Regarding NaNoWriMo - I got the first chapter of the prequel out on schedule, but none of the others happened. I wasn't accounting for the time it takes to edit these before posting them, I suppose. School took precedence over my personal writing, and I wound up skipping an entire week in the middle. Combine those with the chapters on The Salem War turning out longer than I'd expected, and I've only made it to chapter five. What's probably gonna happen is me publishing chapters whenever I get around to finishing/editing them - I might try for a biweekly schedule with Scatterer one Saturday and The Salem War on the next, but we'll have to see how it goes. I'm making progress on both stories, and I have them both fully plotted out chapter-by-chapter, it just depends on which Google doc my muse drags me into.**

 **Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing, and I'll see you next time!**


	14. Roots 2-i

**Roots 2.i**

One last day.

Velocity ran, tearing across city blocks in seconds and blurring between traffic almost as fast as the eye could follow. Or at least, that was what the civilians saw. For Robin himself, things weren't nearly as exciting. He moved faster than a NASCAR stock car, but his perceptions were sped up to the same degree. What seemed from the outside to be a five-minute rush across the city was, from his perspective, a three-hour walk through a world where everything was frozen in place. It was incredibly useful in a fight, but outside of one, it had eventually made his power dull. One could only marvel at birds or bugs frozen in the air so many times.

Still, he was used to it by now. He'd been in Brockton Bay for years, ever since he'd been shipped out here from his Navy posting. He wasn't much better off here than he had been elsewhere, but the opportunities were at least a little bit better. At the very least, he was better off here than he had been on the ocean.

Hopefully, Boston would be another improvement, but Velocity had his doubts. He'd been told about all the benefits he'd be getting, but if the cost was his foundation here being torn up, then was it really worth it? He didn't think so.

He checked his watch. It was minor Tinkertech designed by Armsmaster, designed to keep track of how fast he was moving by monitoring the speed of things around him and changing what it reported to match. He only had five more minutes in real-time before the end of the shift, which meant that it was about time to start heading back to base. He'd almost hoped to find something, given that this was his last day, but that was fine. He didn't want to become a stereotypical last-day cop.

Over the next half-hour or so, he gradually made his way back towards the boardwalk. He wasn't going so fast that things seemed to have stopped entirely - it made even his shortened patrols even more unbearably long, and if he got into a fight, it would have prevented him from having any real impact on the world at all until he slowed down. As it was, people were just barely moving fast enough to notice, and though he was able to cross even the busiest streets without worry, he still had to keep an eye out for cars. He arrived at the Boardwalk with less than two minutes left on his patrol shift, which was a small enough amount of time that he didn't need to spend time schmoozing. He avoided drawing a crowd toward the bridge site and whoever had the next patrol by simply hopping the railing and dropping the six or so feet to the beach below, then turning his power as high as he felt safe doing and stepping out onto the water.

Once he got to these kinds of speeds, even a jog was tiring. He had to struggle a little to even move through the air. The plus side was, as hard as it was for the atmosphere to move around him, it was a hundred times harder for the water to do the same. As long as he kept moving, he'd stay on top of the waves as if they were solid ground.

He stepped into a door built into one of the pillars supporting the Rig - one of several quiet entrances used exclusively by Movers, and one that only saw use by him. He took a moment to decrease the effect of his power so he could shut the door behind him, covering up the plastic sheeting he'd hung there years before, and had to remind himself to lock it - he wouldn't be coming back, and he doubted anyone else would be using it in his absence. Maybe his replacement, but it was hard to say.

Replacement. That didn't feel good to admit, but he knew it was true. Director Piggot had found a better speedster, and within a day the transfer letter was in his mailbox. He'd met Scatter once, the girl was nice enough, and he was fairly sure that she hadn't even known about the transfer when they'd spoken, but the knowledge that she was the reason he had to leave left a bad taste in his mouth.

He pondered this as he exited his stairwell, entering the main hallway and moving towards his private costume area. He checked his watch again - he had a few hours before he needed to report to the Director for his official transfer to be completed, and then he was due in Boston at noon the following morning.

More scheduling, more timing. His life was still being decided for him, even after all these years. He wouldn't complain - it could have been a lot worse, after all - but that didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

"Hi, um, Velocity," a female voice spoke up from behind him, one he'd barely had time to learn to recognize. He turned to find Scatter walking up behind him in full costume. "I heard you were leaving today, and… I guess I wanted to apologize, I guess?" She continued, not seeming to notice the repetition, "I haven't been here very long, but I can tell that I've kind of broken some stuff by being here, and I know what it's like to get separated from a team that you've worked with for so long, and-"

"Scatter," he interrupted. She'd have run out of air if he'd let her keep going - or would she? "It's alright, really. It's not like it's your fault. The director could just as easily have chosen to transfer you instead of me." That wasn't quite true, given their relative levels of usefulness, but he chose not to bring that up. This… wasn't quite what he'd expected.

"Maybe, but still, I just… I don't know." She was getting frustrated with herself, a feeling that he knew well. "I should probably go, I've got patrol in a few minutes. Good luck in, uh, Boston, and I'm sorry, again." She turned and walked away, a little faster than necessary, and Robin let her go.

He turned around as well and continued on his way. He hadn't expected her to be guilty over this. Most people would have just shrugged and moved on, as normal as it was. Granted, she was feeling guilty for the wrong reasons, but it was something, and it felt… good. A little extra light behind him as he ventured into the fog, not enough to truly affect much, but it could still give him some stability.

...or something like that. No one had ever accused him of being good with metaphors.

* * *

As much hope as Vista had put into Velocity when he showed up, it hadn't really panned out. He'd wanted to avoid his background, she guessed, and that meant he didn't want to teach the Wards anything or even tell stories. As soon as she'd realized that, she'd pretty much left him alone, and that meant that she'd never gotten to know him beyond that.

His replacement, though, was a different story. Scatter was not only willing to train her, but she was happy to. Vista was old enough to know that their 'training exercise' yesterday hadn't been a hundred percent legal, and she'd still gone through with it. Not only that, but she'd gone out of her way to convince Piggot to let her train the Wards altogether.

Now if only she could get everyone else to see things the same way.

"C'mon, more training? Don't we get enough of that already?" Clockblocker groused. Vista had the impression that he hadn't been too pleased with how his power had been turned against him in the fight.

"Relax, Dennis, it might be good for you. If Scatter beat you this badly last time, then imagine how much better she'll get if you let her work with you for a bit," Dean responded. Vista felt some heat come to her cheeks as he spoke up and made her decision to stay out of this argument. Dean was on her side, whether he knew it or not, so she was sure that he'd win the debate. Kid Win and Shadow Stalker, manning the console, weren't saying anything yet.

"For a training exercise, she didn't put that much effort into teaching us. It was more like her taking the opportunity to beat us down. I don't know what I did to annoy her, but I'd rather avoid more of that."

Vista knew that wasn't true. Scatter had been holding back, a lot. If she'd been really trying to beat them, they probably wouldn't have ever gotten past the front door. She didn't really understand why Scatter taught the way she did, but after two training sessions with her, she could see the results. She was being forced to think, act, and react faster than she might have otherwise. It wasn't fun, but it worked. Now if only Dennis could understand that!

"Hey, you were impressed by how much Vista had improved after just one session, right?" He gestured to her, smiling, and she buried her face in the computer screen that she hadn't really looked at since she'd opened it as she felt her ears go red. That was the same point she'd just thought of! "Whatever Scatter's doing, it obviously works. I figure we might as well give it a chance to see how much it can do.."

Dennis grumbled, but stopped arguing. Yes! Go, Dean!

Of course, that was when Shadow Stalker decided it was time to open her mouth. "I don't see what the fuss is. She can't do anything serious to you without getting in trouble herself, so why are you so scared of her?"

"She beat me into the ground without even trying, and that was without her razor-sharp scythe-gun that, in case anyone's forgotten, is as big as any two of us put together. That's enough excuse for some fear, in my opinion," Chris piped up from beside Stalker on the console. At Vista's dirty look, he added, "not that I'm against the training! The way I see it, maybe I can make up for my crappy Tinkering with some fighting ability. I just get Dennis' point, is all."

Stalker grunted, turning back to the console. "You call yourself a hero, you should be able to take a little pain." She slipped the headphones back onto her head, very clearly calling an end to her part of the conversation.

Dean kept looking in her direction for a moment, probably watching whatever it was he saw in her emotional state, before returning to the conversation. "Anyway. We're under orders to try it once, and see how it goes from there. You can put up with one more try, Dennis."

"Maybe she'll teach us some of her crazy ninja-acrobat stuff!" Chris interrupted. "Did you notice in the fight when she backflipped into the air, grabbed my gun, and then tried to shoot you with it while she was still upside down?"

"It was about three feet from my head when it started screeching, Chris. Yes, I noticed."

Chris was smiling big now, and Vista noticed Dean doing the same. Vista guessed that it was easy to feel happy for other people when you could actually see their happiness in a cloud around them. Chris continued, "If she could teach us to do that, then just imagine how much we could do in the field! They might even let us go further out than the boardwalk and the school's district!"

Vista certainly hoped so. Experience didn't matter nearly as much to the Wards' bosses as age did, and since they were 'kids,' they got kept away from anything dangerous. They didn't care that Vista had more experience than Velocity or Dauntless, they were grown-ups so they got to save people from Lung and Hookwolf instead of random muggers. It wasn't worth arguing over though. She'd been dealing with their being condescending for years, and she could keep dealing with it. For now, though, she had work to do. She glanced up to the top-left corner of her screen and eyed the clock. Five PM, which meant her 'on-call' hours were up for the day. She turned the laptop off before closing it and returning it to her bag, then standing up and heading toward the elevator.

"Where are you going, Missy?" Dennis asked from behind her. "You normally stick around for a while after your shift ends."

Vista blinked. She hadn't thought that people might notice a change in her pattern. "I'm… going home for a bit. Mom's home. She's been trying to get me to spend more time with her, and it's sad enough that I'm almost starting to feel bad for her." That was technically true, except for the feeling bad about it part. She had other reasons for going home, but she couldn't tell them that. Not that she thought they'd tell anyone, but they'd be worried about her, and that was the last thing she needed.

Dennis wasn't really buying it, but he let it go. "Alright, don't tell me. Just be careful, okay? We don't need another Hookwolf scare." The others, Shadow Stalker excepted, were giving her concerned looks from around the room.

She winced at that. He had no idea how scary that had been. "Don't worry, I'm not doing any cape stuff. I'm going home, nowhere else." They were more than a little skeptical, but they let her be once the elevator arrived on their level.

She slipped into the tail end of a tour group, found her way to the bus stop, and started the long ride toward her mother's house, just a hair into the Docks. Close enough to Empire territory that there wasn't any real risk of the ABB coming after her, not that it mattered to all the people that wanted to walk her home, 'just to be safe.' She could take care of herself, thank you very much.

Her mom's house was slightly nicer than the others in the general area, mostly thanks to her Wards membership affording them some privileges. She occasionally wondered what they'd do if she decided to quit, but that wasn't something that was ever going to actually happen.

Vista- no. She was home now, she had to think of herself as Missy. Missy stepped through the front door, ran up to her bedroom, and locked the door behind her. Technically, she wasn't allowed to do that, but this wouldn't be the first time she'd gotten away with it by playing the 'but Dad lets me do it!' card if she needed to use it. Mom wasn't home from work yet anyway.

Door secured, she set to work, using her power to shift furniture around, being very careful to avoid making changes you could see from outside the room. It was a challenge, but a fun one, and she'd gotten pretty good at it. She also wasn't supposed to use her powers at home, out of costume, but if she did this right then nobody would find out.

Furniture out of the way, she now had a solid twelve-foot square of open floor in the center of the room, which was all she needed.

She took a deep breath, got up on the balls of her feet, just like her martial arts instructor had taught her, and threw herself backward. She rolled over her shoulder, catching herself on an outstretched leg, and kicked it sideways to roll herself left in the same instant. She felt a pull in her hip as she did, but she could still move it, so it was fine.

She caught herself again with a slap on the floor, then pushed forward. A flick of her wrist caused the floor to shoot up in front of her, creating a three-foot wall in her path. She vaulted over it, feeling the strain in her arm as she put too much force on a not-totally-healed muscle she had pulled last time she was doing this. She braced her feet on the wall, pushed off and up to touch the ceiling, eight-point-five feet above the ground-

And slipped, her shoes losing traction on the wall as she slid down and fell flat on her face. That wasn't the first time it had happened. Or the second. Or the tenth. She'd seen Scatter doing that in their first spar, but she still didn't understand how she managed it. Missy looked back to the wall and sighed in relief as she realized she hadn't left scuff marks that time. They were a pain to clean off without people noticing.

She wasn't supposed to be doing this. She'd get in some trouble for using her powers, but it wouldn't be much. Training and pushing herself like this was okay in small doses, but the Youth Guard would throw a fit if they found out she was doing it at home too. They didn't know what it was like to live in this city, and the extra practice would only make her stronger.

Missy picked herself up off the ground, smoothed out her vaulting wall, and set about sculpting platforms from the walls. It was slow going, but this was the third time she'd tried to set it up and it was getting faster each time. The platforms extended to her desired sizes, and she jumped the three feet up to reach the first before launching herself across the four-foot gap to get to the corner of her practice area, wincing as she landed on an ankle she'd twisted the first time she tried this.

All she had to do was get better at this, and then maybe the PRT would let her do things more freely. She knew she was good enough for it. She just needed to prove that she could handle herself.

* * *

"It is with the utmost appreciation that I thank you for your service, and wish you good luck on all of your future endeavors."

There was widespread applause from the gathered audience. Armsmaster's heads-up display began automatically running facial recognition software to identify the various reporters and civilians and identifying who was working for whom, who was being facetious with their applause...

He ended the program manually. There wasn't any reason to use it here. If he'd been speaking, it might have been a different story, but there was no reason to invade people's privacy here.

"Velocity, you are hereby released from all duties with the Protectorate East-North-East," Director Piggot said from her spot on the podium, just where she had been standing days before, giving a small speech at the beginning of Scatter's introduction. Armsmaster was sure that many of those in the audience had caught the connection, and he started mentally composing a response to the inevitable questions that would arise. He didn't fully understand why this had needed to be rushed in this way - typically, the Director was more concerned with the Image side of the cape scene.

Director Piggot continued, "your posting in Boston awaits, and I'm sure I speak for everyone here when I say; thank you for your long service here."

Armsmaster wasn't so sure. Velocity had been around for a while, certainly, but he had never been very effective at doing anything but scout work. Useful, but hardly game-changing. Armsmaster wouldn't normally have attended this PR mess at all, preferring to say his few goodbyes in private, if it hadn't been for a new factor that had forced him to change his plans.

Scatter. The girl's power testing showed her top speed to be on par with Velocity's own, albeit with less maneuverability, but with fewer downsides and a handful of other powers on top of that fact, including a low Tinker rating. All in all, an incredibly potent cape that had the potential to do some incredible things for any team she was a part of.

In other words, a threat.

There was an inherent unfairness when it came to parahuman powers. Beyond the obvious advantages a parahuman had over an unpowered human, not all powers were equal. Armsmaster was comfortable admitting that his own power was likely the only reason he'd been as successful in his career as he had - he'd never been good at politicking or socializing, but his abilities were strong enough to make up the difference. When another cape appeared, pre-set with leadership experience, combat experience, and such an effective power, he felt some concern was warranted.

At the moment, the girl simply wanted to get home. That was a goal he could agree with, but given what he knew about the legal situation surrounding Haywire's technology, it didn't seem to be a feasible one. Fears of interdimensional war were simply too great for Dragon to ever get permission to attempt to search out and contact another world, let alone one as advanced as Scatter's homeland.

No, she'd be staying around. As Piggot's speech finished, Armsmaster stood and began moving offstage along with the gathered command staff of the Protectorate and PRT East-North-East. He hadn't even spoken at the event, just been present, but he felt that he needed every PR advantage he could get.

He'd been making moves already, but he had to do so subtly. He had helped her find a solution to the blade-blunting issue, but she still needed to actually do what Director Piggot had asked. He had no intention of putting real effort into creating her hard-lightning blade concept; as intriguing as the idea was, she hardly needed to be any more effective, and he could hardly use such a thing himself without her asking why she didn't have one yet. They would both need to make do without it, for the moment.

In the meantime, Armsmaster would begin working with her to enhance his own technology. He could already see the possibilities that Remnant's technology could open up for his own Tinkering. If he could incorporate their shifting technology, then that could be the push he needed to keep his career afloat just a little bit longer.

He would need to make every day count, but he could manage it. He'd been fighting his way up the rankings for years, and this girl wouldn't be the one to drag him back down.

* * *

 **Alright, so far so good on the weekly release thing. I don't have quite as much of the next chapter written as I'd like, but I should still be able to put out the next chapter on the 22nd or 23rd. Next chapter will be another interlude, wrapping up the arc, and then we'll (hopefully) get into arc 3 in January.**

 **We're looking in on a few people here, obviously - I couldn't decide on a single perspective for this chapter, so I just chose all of them, heh. This won't be a common thing - I have the rest of the interludes for this story plotted out, POV-wise, and the rest all follow a single character.**

 **In other news, I'll likely begin cross-posting this story to Spacebattles sometime near the end of this week and the beginning of next week. Depending on how much of a pain their formatting is, it might be slow going, but I'll be going through and fixing any errors I come across as I do it. (I've been doing the same as they've been pointed out to me on AO3, but editing chapters on FFN is** **too much of a pain for me to bother with unless it's pretty extreme.)**

 **But yeah, as always, thank you for reading, any reviews are appreciated, and I'll see you next time!**


	15. Roots 2-r

**Roots 2.r**

"Fast enough. I'll see you there." Blake closed her Scroll, automatically ending the call as she stood.

Ruby was gone.

Blake had never met Raven in person, but she'd heard things about her from Yang, Oscar, and Qrow. She saw the world in terms of power alone - if you were strong, you deserved to live, and she couldn't care less about you if you weren't. She was paranoid, overdramatic, and antisocial, and while Blake was self-aware enough to identify these as flaws in herself as well, at least she was working to fix them. Raven seemed incapable of admitting them as flaws and viewed everyone who didn't see the world as she did as somehow _lesser_.

Blake shuddered as she remembered someone else who saw things the same way, who had vanished years beforehand and never reemerged.

Nevermind him. He was in the past, time to deal with the present. As Blake left the room, she began running through her mental checklist. That call required a re-ordering of pretty much everything on it, and a whole lot of things just became completely irrelevant. She'd already gotten in touch with her father, and he'd be taking over her daily issues. Down the hall, the third doorway on the right to reach the elevator bank. That left the individual meetings and discussions, which she'd have to deal with on a case-by-case basis.

The elevator opened with a ding and Blake stepped out into the lobby of the White Fang's brand-new HQ. Construction of the first two floors had been completed less than two weeks ago, and it was continuing upward as quickly as it could be constructed. It had been collaboratively funded by the Councils of all five Kingdoms, an effort that had taken an absurd amount of convincing and politicking. A grand gesture to the people of Menagerie, as thanks for their help and that of the White Fang during the War on the Grimm. For her, it was yet another way to prove their organization's legitimacy to those who still denied it.

She approached the reception desk, where an automated camera had already confirmed her identity with brand-new facial recognition technology, and the man behind it gave her a smile and nod. "Captain Belladonna," he said, referencing her brief-lived military rank from the Grimm war. "What can I do for you?"

Blake didn't bother smiling back. The people here either knew her or knew of her well enough to understand that a lack of a smile didn't mean unhappiness. "I need you to find people to take over all of my projects that you can. I'm leaving, and I'm not sure how long I'll be gone for."

The man's eyes widened. "Leaving? Why- no, nevermind. Classified, I assume." He began tapping away on his terminal as he talked. His name was Noel, and he had been a blessing to find while the hiring for this building had been underway. There were only a handful of people willing to work through the noises of construction with the Faunus' enhanced senses, and Noel was serving as the secretary to the entire building and managing to do it competently. "Let's see. This can be ignored, we can ask Simmon to handle the Vacuo delegation… actually, there isn't much that can't be done without you." He paused. "Wait, no, I didn't mean-"

That brought a smile out of her. "It's fine. What do I still need to do?"

Noel refound his composure after a moment and continued. "There's a meeting with the SDC that you probably want to attend yourself-"

"That shouldn't be a problem, I'll ask Weiss to cancel."

He jerked his head up to look at her in surprise, thrown off his game again. A deep part of Blake felt a hint of amusement at the disruption, but she quashed that as soon as she noticed it. That wasn't exactly the way someone in her position should be acting. Noel continued, "Right. Umm, the Gull corporation has a representative here, who's expecting to at least see you, and- ah, your mother would like to speak with you. She apparently felt the need to send a request for a meeting."

 _Dammit, mom_. "Of… course she did. I'll go see her. Thank you for all your help, Noel."

* * *

"Blake! It's wonderful to see you, dear. How have you been?" Kali Belladonna wrapped her arms around her daughter as if they hadn't seen each other in months.

Blake returned the hug with an eye roll. "I'm doing well, which you could see for yourself if you actually visited. Is there any particular reason you scheduled an appointment to talk to me instead of just coming up and talking to me?"

"Why Blake," Kali responded with mock offense written all over her face, "you know that I'm getting on in years! It's a long walk over there, and up all those stairs!"

Blake was unconvinced. "That building is closer to this house than the market you visit every week, and there's a working elevator. Admit it, you just don't like the noise."

Kali shrugged, struggling to keep the smile off her face. "Well, maybe that plays a small role. I do enjoy being kept up on the latest gossip, though."

Blake watched her mother's hopeful expression and sighed. Kali was influential enough that she'd get whatever info she asked for eventually, confidential or not, so she might as well give her something juicy here. She knew the importance of keeping things secret, and she certainly deserved to know more than Blake usually told her. "Alright, fine, but this doesn't leave this room, okay? Tell Dad if you have to, but only him. We need to keep this quiet."

Kali's eyes narrowed in a way that reminded Blake of a lion stalking its prey. She realized at that moment that her mother hadn't actually expected to get anything important, but it was much too late to backtrack now. As much as she loved her mother, she knew that the woman would never let go of something she'd latched onto. Blake had just built a trap and then fallen into it, and Kali was taking advantage.

Blake preferred to ignore how common of an occurrence this was. It was easier that way.

"Alright. You remember Ruby Rose, right? She's my team leader, you would have seen her at Haven, briefly?"

Kali nodded. "We spoke, I believe. She's a smart young woman. Didn't I hear that she was responsible for that witch's-"

"Yes, that's her," Blake interrupted. "She doesn't like it for that to get spread around, but it was her. Since the Grimm pools were scattered, she's been working as a more typical Huntress, and she ended up fighting someone she couldn't beat. We think she's still alive, but…"

* * *

"Blake! Long time no see! How are things down there?"

"Hello, Sun," Blake responded. "Things have been going well on our end… for the most part."

He was quick enough to pick up what she wasn't telling him. "What's going on?"

"Is your line secured? We need to keep this quiet for as long as we can, or things might get out of control."

Sun cocked his head to one side and responded, "I can get it secure, one sec." The call cut out.

Blake had… complicated feelings toward Sun. He liked her, and he knew she knew it. The problem was, he hadn't ever been incredibly clear as to what, exactly, that meant. They'd been encountering one another sporadically ever since Haven, and he was technically working with the White Fang, as an occasional security contractor for the Vacuo branch. She could hardly deny that he was attractive - hell, Ilia would admit that much - but she really wished that he'd make his intentions clear.

They were both professional enough to keep whatever their relationship was from impacting their work, at least. She received another call from Sun a moment later, and the conversation continued.

"Alright, so what's up?" Blake could tell he was nervous now, no matter how well he tried to hide it.

She responded, "Have you ever heard of a woman named Raven Branwen? She's Yang's biological mother, you may have heard us talking about her at some point."

Sun had to think for a second. "I think I've heard her name. Some tribe out in Mistral, right?"

Blake nodded. "That's her. She's had access to…" did Sun know about the Relics? Blake wasn't sure. Better safe than sorry. "Something classified that we need back, and Ruby wound up accidentally tracking her down. Ruby's now missing in action, and it sounds like Raven took her somewhere."

"She beat Ruby?" Sun whistled. "She's pretty strong, then."

"She was helped by the thing she stole," Blake responded, "but that's not really relevant. Her Semblance lets her create transportation portals over continental distances; she could be anywhere on the planet by now."

Sun took in that information and nodded. "You need me to keep an eye out for her?"

Blake smiled. "Quick as always. I doubt she'll be coming back to civilization anytime soon, but if she does, I'd like to keep an eye out. Like I said, keep the stuff about Ruby quiet. Give your contacts Raven's description from our files and tell them to keep an eye open; and most important of all, tell them not to engage unless they want to get themselves killed." The last thing she needed was for some random Huntsman to die over this and draw more attention to the whole mess.

Sun slammed his fist into his hand, giving his trademark cocky grin. "I'll have every Huntsman in the Kingdom watching out for her. You can count on me!"

Still confident. As confusing as Sun was, he knew how to get Blake to smile if nothing else. "Thank you, Sun. I'll have to see if I can come to visit once this is all over."

His grin shifted from cocky to goofy. "Sounds perfect!" A second later, his face fell and he spoke more seriously, "What will you be doing?"

It was a sign of how well they knew each other that Blake didn't even blink at the apparent non-sequitur and was able to follow his train of thought. "The gang's getting back together. I'm leaving for Mistral to meet up with team Juniper, and Weiss is picking up Yang before flying out to meet us."

"Where are you headed after that? Am I gonna need to keep an eye on scroll signals to see when you enter a tower's range, or will you be staying in contact?"

Sun knew as well as she did that information could get outdated within minutes, and the time it took for her to receive a message on Raven's location could be long enough for her to portal somewhere else. "That's not something we can really help," Blake said. "CCT coverage is expanding without the Grimm, but it's not everywhere, and I don't see Raven venturing into scroll range very often. I'll have to see if Weiss has a solution - if not, I'll contact you whenever we get into range."

Sun nodded, grinning once more. "Yes, ma'am! Stay strong out there, and good hunting!" The call ended, and Blake closed the line.

* * *

Sun wouldn't be enough help, and Blake knew it. He could watch Vacuo, Weiss' people could keep an eye on Atlas, and she could assume that Oscar and Glynda would be watching Vale, but her assets in Mistral were still relatively weak. On the upside, she wasn't the only person in Menagerie with an interest in keeping an eye on things. The downside, of course, was having to interact with people who were paranoid enough to want to keep an eye on things without having seen most of the things that justified said paranoia.

That was why she'd sent an apparently innocuous message to an unlisted Scroll number, pre-determined typos entered along the way in a particular pattern that her spelling checker absolutely loathed, then received an equally-innocent response containing a similarly-annoying code for her to crack. That, in turn, was why she had entered one of the nicer areas of Kuo Kuana - still rather quaint by the standards of somewhere like Vale, but the height of luxury for the citizens here. It was also, she assumed, why a man with patches of fox fur around his eyes and hands sat down at her table at almost the exact same time she did, as if they had planned to meet here.

Which they had, Blake supposed. Just not in the manner any normal person would choose to do so in.

"Ms. Belladonna," the man started. "It's an honor to meet you." As he spoke, he tapped the table with his middle finger, and Blake saw a glow of Aura flash across it. It took her a moment to figure out what he had done. Every conversation she could hear from the surroundings was incomprehensible, as if the participants were speaking a totally different language. She assumed that the same would be true for any others attempting to listen into their own conversation. She saw the utility immediately and made a mental note to try and find someone with a similar Semblance.

Blake responded, "I wish I could say the same. Unfortunately, I have no idea who you are."

He only smiled, in an infuriating way that she'd seen few people that weren't part-fox manage. "That's the idea. Now, I believe you had a request for us?"

Blake would have sighed if she could, but she suspected that was exactly what he wanted. She did it internally instead. "Yes. I need any information you have on a woman named Raven Branwen. She's Human, the leader of a bandit tribe that's typically active on Mistral. I also need to be alerted as quickly as possible if she's spotted, on that continent or any other."

The man nodded, taking it all in stride. They likely had a good amount of information on Raven already, since she was one of an increasingly small number of real threats remaining in the world. Not that they'd tell her everything, but she or her teammates almost certainly already knew anything they were keeping from her. She needed the basics and most recent activity, nothing more.

It wouldn't do to tell them that, though. Ostensible allies they may have been, but the White Fang and the Menagerie Intelligence and Surveillance Team were far from friendly.

"You should be receiving the files now," he said, and Blake didn't miss the implication that he'd either already known what she would be asking him or had people listening in to the call. It was the latter, of course. Blake could hear the barest impression of a voice coming through his admittedly subtle earbud, though she doubted that anyone without a Faunus Huntress' senses would have done the same. "I do hope you will remember this favor, the next time we request the help of your own organization."

"Within reason, of course."

"Of course," the man responded, smiling again. Overconfidence, on his part. Surveillance skills aside, his group didn't have nearly as much clout as they liked to imagine. Overconfidence was fine with Blake, though, so she wouldn't argue too much. As it stood, the two groups were allies. If they tried to make a move that she didn't like, she'd put them in their place.

They both stood simultaneously, coming to a mutual understanding that the meeting was over. The man tapped the table again, and the surrounding voices came back into focus as clear Vytalian.

"It really was a pleasure to meet you, Captain Belladonna." The man turned, and vanished into the crowd within moments.

* * *

Blake had been awake for over an hour by the time the airship's landing gear shook the craft as it came into the station, though she could hear the shuffling of people being woken up through the walls. She imagined that the company would be receiving some complaints about the choppy landing, but that was hardly any of her business.

He bags were packed and she was the first off the ship. Mount Haven stretched into the sky a quarter-mile ahead, and she could see the walls that had been damaged by the old White Fang in her last visit, repaired at some point over the intervening few years. She might have liked to visit, perhaps explore an academy that she hadn't really had the chance to see outside of combat, but she had other places to be.

The city of Mistral was built atop the steepest mountain range on the planet. Some Huntsmen were dexterous and tough enough to scale the sides of the mountain, and Blake was among their number, but far easier methods of moving from place to place had been created. Elevator shafts ran through the center of the mountains, connected to buildings on the outer edge, and crowds of civilians used these to get to different levels on the mountain. The address Blake had memorized on the flight was on the next mountain over, several layers below her current position, connected to a spot nearby on this mountain by one of the more impressive bridges in the city. Shops and market stalls lined the bridge walkway to her left and right, with Dust, traveling supplies, and weapon maintenance services making up most of the sales this close to Haven Academy.

Blake reached the other side, then moved through an intra-mountain tunnel to reach a pavilion on the opposite face. There, decorated in typical Mistrali style, was a series of holoboards, lists of Huntsmen and possible missions displayed across them. The majority of Huntsmen would visit places like this fairly often, and though Blake had rarely found the chance, she knew that team JNPR would be using them on a regular basis. This board, in particular, was for the area to Mistral's southwest, centered around the ruins of Kuroyuri.

As expected, Blake found their names quickly. They were on assignment in Oniyuri, on a fact-finding mission - or not. As she watched, the mission crossed itself out and their names disappeared from underneath it as the mission was marked as a success. She turned around, spotting the names reappearing on the board for hireable teams, and heard a paper door sliding open on the floor above her.

 _They're here? Now?_

Sure enough, a blond man outfitted with more plate armor than was worn by most Huntsmen _teams_ stepped through the door, followed by a young woman in white, pink, and gunmetal and a man in green with a distinct Southern Anima cast to his features. The leader turned to talk with the other pair without looking down, but the woman spotted her, and Blake could see her eyes widening in excited recognition.

Blake braced herself for impact.

"Blaaaaaake!" Seconds later, she was struggling to stand as Nora Valkyrie practically hung off her in a deep hug, having jumped the twenty feet down from the ledge like it was nothing. Jaune and Ren hadn't spotted her before seeing Nora jump, but followed up moments later.

"Blake! I thought you were in Menagerie!" Jaune stated the obvious, as usual. Still as thick as ever.

Ren, meanwhile, got straight to the point as Nora finally released her. "Are you just visiting, or are you on assignment?"

Blake winced a little, recovering from… well, Nora. "Unfortunately, neither this time. There's a situation, and it's one that you're going to want to help with. We probably shouldn't discuss it here, though - are you staying somewhere? If not, I can set something-"

Jaune interrupted, "You don't need to do that, we've got an apartment. If you're sticking around, you can stay with us."

"No, it's fine, I can find my own-"

"You're fine, Blakey! Now come on, if you have something to tell us, then let's get going! We can catch up on the way."

Blake sighed. Nora had noticed that something was wrong immediately, of course. It almost made Blake wonder how she'd ended up close enough to people that they could read her like this. Or had she just gotten more obvious? "...Right. Okay. Let's go. Weiss and Yang are coming too, but they'll be a few days. I don't guess you've heard from Qrow, have you?"

* * *

 **So the whole 'getting the story posted to Spacebattles' thing didn't actually happen in the last couple of days as I hoped. This chapter is even a little later than I'd hoped, thanks to things suddenly getting busy for me this weekend. Probably should have anticipated that, it being Christmas and all, but I didn't. I'm gonna try and get it up sometime in the next week, but we'll have to see how it goes.**

 **But yeah! Blake's doing things and trying too hard, as per usual. For those who are reading Ward, she almost reminds me of Kenzie in her tendency to overwork herself, albeit with more of a focus on her own guilt than on pleasing others. She's setting up a _lot_ of stuff, here. I feel like this chapter could be better than it is, but if I tried to fix it I'm pretty sure we'd end up with another Seed 1.i scenario, so I'm putting it out there now and I'll maybe fix it later.**

 **I think that's everything. As always, thank you all for reading (and maybe reviewing), any constructive feedback you want to give is appreciated, I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next time!**


	16. Bud 3-1

**Bud 3.1**

Oh, Gods. Anything but this. I hadn't ever had to deal with this before, whose idea was it to put me here?

Two dozen preschoolers were running around in the next room, their teachers barely audible over the racket they were making. The door was built in two halves, each of which could swing independently, and the space between them was big enough to peer through, so I got a clear view of the kids that would be taking up my next hour.

"How often do we have to do this?"

Challenger chuckled. "Not often. Less often if it turns out you're bad at it, but there aren't many people that really are. You don't need to be all that charismatic to keep the attention of a bunch of five-year-olds- when you're a superhero, that is."

He was being entirely too happy, which was saying something coming from me. "You enjoy this kind of thing, don't you? Why can't you be the one to do it?"

"Because for all you know, you're amazing at this!" He caught my expression and continued, "...okay maybe not, but you never know. Now, they've finally quieted down out there, so it's time to move out. You ready to do this?"

Alright. I could do this. How bad could it really be? "As I'll ever be, I guess."

I looked through the crack again, watching and listening as the kid's teacher told them what was going on. "...we have some very special visitors here today, and they'll be reading you a story. Be sure you pay very close attention, and they might just let you ask a few questions at the end. Now, if they're ready?" She said the last part more quietly, glancing toward the door, and the PRT guard in civilian wear knocked twice on the door.

I reached for the door handle, before remembering to put on my mask at the last second. Wouldn't that be the worst way to accidentally put my face out there? It was a funny thought, and I grounded myself there. Humor was good, it kept things positive.

I reached for the door handle before pausing. "Hey, are we allowed to use our Sem- powers at all in here?"

"Don't do anything to any of the kids, and I don't see why not. What are you planning?"

I smiled, not that he could see it. "Just wondering." My Aura stretched through the crack in the door as I heard the teacher beginning her introductions. "You've met one of them before, but the other's pretty new, so stay respectful, okay? Everyone, this is Scatter."

As she finished, and rose petals began floating around the other side of the door, I scattered myself and pushed through, reappearing on the other side much like I'd done while sparring Assault, reforming with a bow.

In hindsight, that might not have been the best move, given how the kids went from miraculously well-behaved to rowdier than they had been before in the span of about three seconds. I caught the teacher sending me dirty looks as she waded into the crowd once again, and slumped a little as Challenger came into the room the normal way.

"I probably could have told you to avoid that, though." I chose to ignore his barely suppressed chuckles as I thanked my mask for hiding the blush that had probably climbed to my ears.

How was I supposed to know? "I've never really been around little kids before," I muttered, not totally sure he could hear me over the noise.

He stepped forward, just to the brim of the mob, and I could see a few kids noticing that he was there and putting their hands together as if they were about to start clapping. What was he doing?

I got my answer as he raised his own hands and clapped in a distinctive beat, beat, triple-beat pattern, and every kid who heard him stopped in their tracks and repeated it. That got the attention of the rest, and they all clapped together when he did it again.

"Hello again, everyone." Challenger had to pause as the mob of kids shouted as the entire mob shouted responses in the vein of 'Hello Challenger' together, then started giggling amongst themselves. "Like Miss Rathman said, this is Scatter, and she'll be reading your story today."

I didn't take the groans that followed that sentence personally. Not at all. Nope.

"Hey, now that's not being very nice, is it?" Challenger continued. "I can't be the only person who does this, right? Right. So let's all sit down and listen to the story, and maybe we can get you all a surprise after, huh?"

That got them sitting down and quiet. I shot Challenger a thankful glance and nod that I hoped he could interpret the way I hoped. Then, I sat down, picked up the book that had been leaning against the chair but had since fallen to the floor in the ruckus, and started to read. "Once upon a time, in a faraway country, there lived a King."

"You know, that story didn't make a lot of sense. There are easier ways to get rid of elephants than filling a palace with enough mice to scare them out. I'm not sure how wise those men actually were."

"To be fair, it was a little kid's book. Slaughtering all the elephants may not have been the best way of getting the moral of the story across."

"...They didn't need to _kill_ all the elephants either. They could have just chased them out," I responded, more than a little embarrassed. "What kind of palace is big enough to hold elephants anyway? Who has that much space?"

Challenger gave me a funny look at that. "Lots of palaces, as far as I know. Kings were rich, they could afford to have the room."

"Seems pretty wasteful to me. They only had so much room to expand to, or they would have started losing... people." It took another odd look and a few seconds for me to realize what I was saying. "…right. No Grimm here, so no limits on expanding. I forgot." And just like that, my mood went down the drain.

"It's alright. It's interesting, actually, the little ways that something as massive as the Grimm must have changed things. You had limited space, so did things get built higher than they would have here?"

I could tell what he was doing, and it wasn't going to work out the way he imagined. He was trying to get me talking about home, but it wasn't going to help. Each mention, each tiny difference, felt like it was wearing away at me. At home, we had to deal with the Grimm, but that wasn't the case here. At home, we built our cities tall in order to stay in the naturally-defended areas, but here the cities were more spread out.

I took a second longer than normal to reply, trying to find a way to change the topic. "Yeah, that was a thing, kind of. It's a long story. Umm… hey, how did you know how to deal with those kids so well?"

I almost groaned at how obvious that was, but Challenger didn't make anything of it. Taking the change in topic in stride, he responded, "I've been visiting that school in particular for a while now. One of the perks of being a long-term Protectorate member is that I get greater freedom of choice over what PR events I do, and I try to focus where I can to a few places."

I couldn't see his face through his featureless silver mask, but I could practically hear the smile on his lips as he said it, in a way that reminded me of… the sound of Kali Belladonna's voice when she'd looked at Blake the one time we'd met. As if whatever he was thinking about was so positive, so inherently _good_ , that they couldn't help but smile. A few places, he'd said…

"Those places wouldn't happen to be ones that have people you know, would they?"

He turned his head suddenly to look at me, then gave a short laugh that was barely more than a slightly harder exhalation than normal. "You picked up on that fast, didn't you? Yeah, one of the munchkins back there was mine, and I've got two more at an elementary school near the Towers. They're all a little young to tell them anything about… well, what I do for a living, but I wanted to make sure they had a good impression of everything we do." He paused for a second. "That's not always true for a lot of kids, and a lot of the time it gets even worse for the kids of capes. Has anybody told you how powers tend to spread, here?"

This wasn't a good sign for how this conversation was going. "I… know some of it. How people get them, in this world."

"In this world? No, sorry, nevermind. That wasn't quite what I meant, anyway. Kids of parahumans have a tendency to get powers of their own - New Wave's a good example, if you know them."

"Yeah, I know them. They're the other big hero team, right? All one big family?"

"Yep. The problem is - and I'd appreciate it if you kept it quiet that I brought this up - if you ever talk with them for an extended period of time, you start to notice things about their family and issues with how they function as a group. I'm not going to bring up any details, but I don't want my family to end up like that."

"Are you sure it's the powers that did that? Families can fall apart without them." I was coming across a little defensively there, but it was hard not to feel a little attacked. I'd grown up in a family with powers, after all.

Challenger nodded slowly. "I'm not going to say that it happens to every family with powers, and it might not be related for New Wave… but I can't help but draw the connection. In the worst case, I figure I get to surprise them with my being a superhero." He paused, then chuckled a little. "Even if it does wound my pride a little when one of them says that their favorite hero is Dauntless."

We both laughed at that. What he'd said had gotten me thinking, though. PR was important here, and I needed to figure out how well I was doing what I was doing. I was fairly sure the teacher hated me now, but the kids were… a lot harder to read. "Hey… when you get a chance, could you ask them how they enjoyed that? I couldn't really tell, and I'm worried about figuring out this whole public relations thing, and-"

"Don't worry, I can ask," Challenger interrupted. "Based on what I saw though… you weren't amazing, but you weren't bad, either. If I had to guess, they were a little more hyper because they hadn't really heard of you before, and the PR people will have you trying this again after you've been around for a while."

"Well, if I'm around for that long," I responded.

He blinked. "Uh, yeah, right." There was a pause, neither of us sure how to continue the conversation. He took the initiative, changing the subject. "So I heard that you were going to be doing some training with the Wards this afternoon, right? I don't suppose your worries about those kids had some founding in that?"

That made me laugh. "Nah, I wasn't really worried, about this anyway. I've hung around enough teenagers with superpowers to have a pretty good idea of how they work. I grew up leading three of them, _as_ one of them. I don't think I'll have any issues."

"Are you sure? The Wards might not be quite the same as your old team, for any number of reasons. They won't have your team's experience at first, either, and I'd be willing to bet that none of them are quite ready for whatever you're planning."

"Ah, it should be fine. I've never met anyone who didn't enjoy doing this, and a few of them already kind of know what they're in for."

* * *

"Alright, everyone, gather around! Who's ready for day one of the Rose Huntsmen academy?" I shouted into the training room as I pushed the doors open. Idly, I noticed that the damage from my spar with Assualt had been repaired over the last few days, and the entire room looked as good as new.

The Wards were scattered around in various places; I didn't see Shadow Stalker, but the others were immediately visible. I could hear Kid Win flying his hoverboard a handful of inches over the second-level balconies, practicing evasive maneuvers based on the rapid shifts in the pitch of the board's buzzing. Vista was in the same place I'd found her the first time she'd practiced with me, beating up the same training dummy with some much greater efficiency than before. From the looks of things, she'd taped… wood twigs to the dummy's limbs, and was using her power to dance around the mannequin while peppering it with blows from every angle, with Triumph looking on from outside the ring. Those three were in full costume, but I spotted Clockblocker, Aegis, and Gallant in a group in the far corner, talking quietly. Gallant was in what looked like a stripped-down version of his sci-fi knights armor that was lacking the full plating, and the other two were in workout clothes and domino masks.

I could already tell who was going to be putting in the most effort in at first. Hopefully, that would change as things continued and they realized how useful this was going to be. Where was Stalker, though?

I got my answer seconds later. The Wards turned to see my coming in and started moving towards me, and a shadow fell past Kid as he flew down from the second story. I caught a glimpse of a dark shape with hints of a bone structure visible, and instinctively took a step back and was halfway to a guard position before realizing what I was seeing. Shadow Stalker was wearing her cloak and mask over workout clothing, which was an odd level of commitment to this whole thing if you asked me, and exuding a sense of satisfaction through her body language over managing to put me on my back foot.

I had the inklings of an idea as to what her deal was, but I still hadn't really put the pieces together. There was something vaguely familiar in how she acted though, that I really couldn't place.

"I'll take that as a yes. Alright, first things first, we're going to see where you're all at, skill-wise. You normally practice by sparring with each other, right?" There were a few nods, so I continued. "That means you all have pretty good ideas of how you fight, so I'll have you working together in two teams. Clock, Kid, and Vista, I've already seen you spar, so you're one team. Triumph, Aegis, Gallant, and Stalker, you're the other."

I saw some nervous shifting at that. Some of that was probably thinking about the unbalanced teams, but I had plans to deal with that. The bigger issue was the glances some of them were giving own teammates - The entirety of the Shadow Stalker's team was looking toward her, their expressions absolutely dripping with doubt, and Vista was giving Clockblocker a look that I couldn't really read. It shouldn't be an issue though. I'd figured out my issues with Weiss quickly enough, and it wasn't like these were permanent teams, anyway.

I continued, "If things turn out to be too unbalanced, I'll step in on one side or the other. You can use your powers as much as you want as long as nobody gets hurt - and I'm trusting you all to know how far is too far." There were more nervous glances at Shadow Stalker following that statement. Uh oh. I guessed I'd be keeping a closer eye on her over the course of this. "If somebody says or otherwise signals that they're out, then they're out and you need to shift targets. Once you're out, move out of the line of fire as quick as you can, and I'll grab you if I need to. Any questions?"

There weren't any, and the teams each moved to one of the side walls to plan before the challenge started. I was hoping that the first team had learned something from what we'd discussed in the time after my spar with them, but I wasn't sure. I knew I could count on Vista, at least, but from the body language I was seeing in that huddle, the other two weren't paying her a whole lot of attention.

The other side of the room had almost the opposite problem. Shadow Stalker wasn't bothering to even try and participate in the planning, and outside of a token attempt on Gallant's part to get her involved, she looked to be ignoring everything they had to say.

It was probably fine. Team RWBY had gone through these kinds of issues, and we'd worked it out in the end. It had taken a while, and they'd gotten some help from Team JNPR and the professors, but we'd managed, and these guys would too.

After a few minutes, I called out to the room, "Alright, everybody get ready! We're starting in ten seconds!"

The second team, minus Stalker, broke their huddle with a small cheer, while the first team moved apart more quietly. Kid WIn's hoverboard whirred to life, and he flew above his teammates as Aegis did the same on the opposite side. Vista held a few steps back behind Clockblocker, though she didn't look happy about it. Shadow Stalker edged toward one side of the battlefield, with Gallant and Triumph keeping their distance below and behind Aegis.

I was standing on a first-level catwalk, between the two groups and opposite of Shadow Stalker. As the groups settled into position, I put my hand in the air with three fingers extended, and counted down.

"Three!" Vista let out a steadying breath, Triumph inhaled, and Gallant raised his arms, light flickering around them.

"Two!" Shadow Stalker crouched for a lunge in Clockblocker's general direction, while Clock himself reached into a compartment on his back.

"One!" Aegis and Kid, suspended in the air as they were, didn't seem to outwardly react, but could imagine their eyes narrowing as they focused on their targets, and only on their targets. A rookie mistake.

"Begin!" Triumph and Gallant let loose, a cone of hard sound and a spread of formless blasts of emotion-altering light shooting across the no-man's land as Kid Win's lasers strafed the other side. They wouldn't do any real damage, but they had enough kick to them to get Triumph covering his face. Only around half of the beams were actually hitting what Kid was aiming at, given how Aegis was chasing him around the room, and that number quickly dropped down to zero as their chase rose into the air and started looping around the catwalks.

On the ground, Clockblocker was running as fast as he could toward the slight cover granted by the boxing ring. Triumph's blast was spread out enough that it wasn't actually doing any damage, but Gallant was putting enough shots in the air that cover was still needed. Vista was growing the boxing ring while also shifting it closer to the pair. Once they got to cover, I saw her looking up toward the ceiling, making changes to the second and third levels as well, trying to impede Aegis while giving Kid more openings to fire.

It… really wasn't helping. The field was locked down, and things didn't change. Clockblocker started setting up sheets of paper as defensive barriers, ensuring that the fight wouldn't be moving for a while. Triumph and Gallant glanced toward each other, swapped a couple of hand-signals, and split up, trying to flank the fortification, but Clock continued setting up more paper on either side. The fight in the air continued, but Kid wasn't doing anything that would stop Aegis while Aegis wasn't nearly fast or maneuverable enough to catch Kid. It was a stalemate, and it probably wouldn't be changing anytime soon.

I nonchalantly walked in Gallant's direction over the catwalks, keeping an eye on the battles above and below me to make sure nothing was actually changing. He wasn't moving directly under them, but he also wasn't keeping an eye on anything that wasn't Clock and Vista. He wasn't even looking for Kid Win when he could be ambushed from above at any point. Vista was looking up there since she was helping her teammate evade, but she was the only one to do so.

On the other hand, neither of the flyers was paying any attention to the fight below them, either. Whoever won up there would probably turn their attention back to the ground, but until then it was essentially two different fights. I'd need to fix that.

Time for me to enter the fray.

* * *

 **Ruby continues to be far more optimistic about her abilities in this field than she has any right to be.**

 **I might have misstepped somewhat in where this chapter fell - I probably should have moved the first segment to the end of the last arc and moved the beginning of next chapter to the end of this one, but it's a little late now, and I had to cut the second half of the fight scene or balloon the chapter by an extra thousand words. I might fix it if I ever get around to rewriting.**

 **The Spacebattles move still hasn't happened, but I'm still trying to find the time. It'll happen soon (tm), I promise.**

 **As always, thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!**


	17. Bud 3-2

**Bud 3.1**

I could have probably stood to make some kind of plan for how I'd be engaging, but… nah. It wasn't necessary, and I didn't need to push them _too_ hard.

I scattered through the catwalk beneath me, coming down right on top of Gallant, planting my feet on his shoulders and launching off into a backflip as he went sprawling. I hit the ground in a roll, came to my feet, and launched myself toward Shadow Stalker just as she dropped through the floor. Triumph shouted in my direction, both attacking me and letting his teammates know I was there, but the wide cone he was using was barely scratching my Aura so I pushed on.

Unlike the Wards, I kept an eye and ear on my surroundings. I heard the light whirring of Gallant's suit helping him keep his balance and the humming of Kid Win's hoverboard overhead. I caught a glimpse of Vista trying to get through Clockblocker's barricade using her power before giving up, jumping a good thirty inches into the air from a standing start, plant her feet on one side of the barricade, and vault over the other side in one of the more impressive feats of parkour I'd seen from her yet. I didn't miss the way she landed though - favoring her left foot over her right one, and wincing just a bit when she started running.

As I ran towards Triumph, I saw the shape of his eyes widening behind his visor and felt my Aura warn me of a concentrated attack that would soon be aimed at my chest. I knew it was coming, so I could prepare. As the area of his attack shrank to a fraction of its former radius, I scattered into a missile, momentarily going blind to the outside world as I propelled myself forward and _up,_ over Triumph's head. I was moving slower than I could have been, but it was working to my advantage. He kept his attack focused on me as I rose, and I rode the force of it like a kite, as I soared to the ceiling.

I couldn't see or hear when I was in this state. I'd long since suspected that of being the reason my senses were so strong elsewhere, as a way of making up for the relative blindness to my surroundings I experienced when I had no eyes or ears to sense with. Whether that was the reason or not, however, my senses did give me an advantage here. I waited in my other form for one second, then another, until my Aura warned me that something was about to impact it. A fraction of a second _before_ it flared, I shifted back into Ruby, kicking Kid Win off his hoverboard as I materialized.

I'd heard where he was and where he was moving from the ground, and he hadn't changed his pattern in the seconds before I scattered, so I'd correctly guessed that he would still hold to that pattern.

He missed the third-level catwalk that we were just above at the time, but he hit the second. He'd be fine, he's taken that kind of hit in the warehouse. In the meantime, I bailed off his board, dropped back to the first-story catwalk that Vista had risen to while I was in the air, and promptly had to scatter around a beam of light that was aimed at my center-mass. Gallant had shifted his focus to the bigger threat, and from the looks of things, the rest of his team was doing the same thing.

Behind me, just within Vista's eyesight, Clockblocker was climbing a newly-shaped staircase to the second floor to check on his teammate while Vista herself put as much distance between us as possible. At the same time, Aegis flew down to tackle me from above, Gallant and Triumph unloaded everything they had, and Shadow Stalker jumped through a wall on the level above me, firing a pair of hand crossbows that she'd found… somewhere.

That was a few too many attacks at once for my taste. I fell through the floor, rolled out of the way as Triumph tried to bring it down on my head, and ran for the wall. Then I ran _up_ the wall, kicked off it to reach the second floor, dove through Shadow Stalker as each of us phased through the other, kicked Aegis in the head as he flew down the catwalk toward me in an attempt to grapple, and caught Clockblocker totally off-guard by wrapping my cloak around him. He froze it, probably purely on reflex, and got himself stuck just like last time.

"Alright, timeout!" I called. The approaching Wards, in various states of confusion, came to stops all around the room and began moving closer, eventually settling in the vicinity.

As the approached, I was putting together a short round of advice on how they could improve. I was beaten to it, however by Clockblocker. With a hardness to his tone that probably had something to do with his still being frozen in midair, he said, "What was that for? I thought this was going to be a normal sparring match?"

His tone and the question both caught me off-guard, and Kid Win butted in before I responded. "I got knocked down in the exact same way I did last time, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. What's the point of this if you don't give us a chance to learn anything?"

Vista looked almost insulted, and Shadow Stalker was pretty unreadable, but everyone else was nodding along. I spoke up so that I wouldn't get drowned out by more people talking. "How are you going to learn to avoid that kind of attack if you only see it once? I'm not intentionally bringing you down the same way, I'm trying to get you to watch out for the most obvious methods of using your powers against you. It was the first thing I learned back when I first found my Semblance - if I rushed ahead too quickly without looking to see what was going on, I'd run into something or get taken down instantly some other way."

Triumph was the one who replied this time, raising a hand to stop anyone else from interrupting. "People here don't fight like… like your people seem to. Watching for people using our powers against us is important, but very few people are able to do it in the ways that you're able to."

Gallant responded next. "I… think I speak for everyone here when I say that this isn't quite what we expected out of this. Hand-to-hand, agility training… not getting knocked out of the air fifteen feet above the ground, having someone almost dislocate your shoulders with a kick, or getting frozen in what looks like a _really_ uncomfortable position for an extended period of time."

He finished that statement with a smile, at least. They weren't _too_ mad. Still, though, I was having trouble grasping the argument. "That _was_ agility training. Kid, when I flew up and knocked you off your hoverboard, you had plenty of time to swerve out of the way. Clock, your teammates bought you enough time to figure out how to avoid me."

"You're a speedster, and you're expecting us to- _oh shi-"_ Clockblocker was interrupted by my cloak unfreezing and his falling to the walkway. After picking himself back up, to the great amusement of the rest of his teammates, he continued, "You're expecting us to keep up with you with no practice. Seems a little unfair, doesn't it?"

I was going to respond, but Vista beat me to it. "No, it doesn't!" The entire group looked to her in surprise Don't you get it? It's hard, sure, but so is an actual fight! If we never train hard, then how are we ever going to improve? We might not get any worse, but we sure won't get any better, either."

Several of the Wards looked ready to respond to that, but I cut them off. "That's exactly what I was going for. Most of the reason I'm still alive is that I had the advantage of training with people who were way, _way_ beyond me in skill."

"This isn't your home, Scatter." That was Aegis, and the words bit deep. "Nobody here is that good, so it's not nearly as important to be at that level."

Shadow Stalker gave him a sharp look, surprising me and triggering a round of complex expressions around the group. "The stronger we can get, the better off we'll be. There are combat thinkers out there, people who have trained for years. The first time any of you runs into one of them, you're doomed. Scatter certainly seems skilled enough to match them, so if she can get us to that level, then we could beat just about anyone. Seems worth it to me."

That was exactly my point, but the way she'd put it… Stalker seemed very focused on fighting others. It was true, and certainly the point of this kind of training on Remnant, but it wasn't what I was trying for here.

...Maybe they had a point, actually.

"That might be true," Gallant said, "but we're _Wards_. Training is important, but not so much that we need to get ourselves hurt over it." He glanced at Vista when he said that, and I didn't miss the small flinch she gave at his words. What was that about? "If I could make a recommendation, I think it would be a good idea to break for the evening."

I wasn't offended when he looked toward Triumph to ask permission, but I didn't miss the implication, whether Gallant intended it or not.

Triumph responded, "That sounds like a good idea. Anybody who wants to stick around can do so, and the rest of us can head back to the Wards HQ. If that's alright with you, Scatter?"

I wasn't sure if Gallant meant what he was implying, but I could immediately tell that Triumph didn't. He was legitimately asking permission, and I suspected that, had I said no, he would have ordered the Wards to stay a while longer. I wasn't about to do that, though. "...Alright. We'll see about trying this again in the future. Who's staying?"

Vista's hand rose immediately, but hers was the only one. Even Shadow Stalker had apparently decided to stick with the others. I hadn't been expecting that at all, but I suspected that she had some reasoning behind it. That was confirmed when, as the rest of the Wards left through the elevator, Stalker instead walked to near the center of the room, looked down, and dropped through the floor.

* * *

"So, I think we need to talk."

Vista looked confused. "About what?" She was watching me carefully from the second-story catwalk, preparing to jump in whatever direction she needed to in order to avoid my next hit.

"About this." I rushed her straight on, and she barely managed to roll to the side as she stretched out space behind her to keep me from following too closely behind. I stopped shy of actually landing atop the catwalk, instead catching myself on the side, kicking off back to the ground, and running after her there. She saw me coming, but not before I caught up to her. I jumped upward, scattered through the floor, and gave a light kick just above the ankle on her back foot.

Normally, that wouldn't have done more than trip her up. The way she'd been moving up until now, she should have recovered instantly, but the graze sent her sprawling. I'd seen the weak spot, how she was favoring the one leg ever so slightly, but it looked like it was worse than she'd been letting on - I was thankful she didn't end up falling.

"Oh no, are you okay!?" I called out. I hadn't been expecting that at all.

"...ow," Vista responded. She grabbed onto the railing and pulled herself to her feet, carefully putting weight on the injured leg until she was sure it would hold up. "What happened?"

 _Here it goes,_ I thought. "That's what I was going to ask you. That ankle's been weaker than normal all day, and I know I didn't cause it. What happened?" I suspected I already knew - I'd seen this kind of thing before, if not in the same way.

She paused for a second, in thought. "I twisted that ankle a couple of days ago. I can barely even feel it now, so I thought it had healed."

That was a lie and I knew it. "Can I ask how you twisted it?"

I saw her brow scrunch in light worry, before relaxing in what looked like… acceptance? "...I was practicing doing this kind of thing in my room. I made a big parkour setup to do it, and I tripped and fell."

Yeah, that was what I'd expected. Also exactly the kind of thing I might have done at that age and in her situation, but it was a bad plan. "Why weren't you doing it here? You could have gotten more seriously hurt than that, and without the medics nearby."

Vista didn't miss a beat before almost _growling_ her reply. "Because they won't let me! I'm only allowed to train for a handful of hours a week, thanks to the Youth Guard. I had to do it where the PRT couldn't find out, or I'll never get good at this!"

...That explained a lot, actually. "So that's why you've gotten so much better at this than the others. How much were you doing that?"

"A few hours a day… on top of what we'd been doing here." Vista looked at me guiltily, but it didn't strike me as guilt at breaking the rules. A few hours a day… estimate two or three hours, plus the time we'd been training together, and I was looking at twenty-five or thirty hours a week. I hadn't been putting in that much time at _Beacon_ when I was in training. "You just told me that you can see it's been working, and I've been getting faster with my powers, too! Look, I can show you."

My eyes widened. "Uh, Vista…"

The room expanded to half-again the size it was before, the floor rising to meet us where we were sitting. Segments of the wall stretched out into platforms and barriers, and the catwalks above and around us curled into waves and loops. In the span of about three seconds the layout of the entire room had shifted into a parkour arena worthy of Haven Academy. When it stopped shifting, Vista turned to face me, and I found myself at a loss for words.

"...Woah."

Vista nodded. "See? I couldn't do that a week ago, and it's because of what I've been doing on my own!"

She was getting upset, and I could see the signs of frustration coming to the fore. She really needed to talk to someone, but I would need to tread carefully. If I set her off, I could accidentally alienate her, and that wouldn't go well for either of us.

After a moment of consideration, I said, "This… seems like it must be pretty important to you, huh?"

Vista must have noticed the hesitation in my tone, and she took a breath before nodding. "You could say that, yeah."

"Would I be right in guessing that it has something to do with your age?"

She hesitated, but sat down after a few moments with a quiet exhalation. Good, she didn't hate me for that. "Did you know that I've been here longer than any other Ward except Gallant?"

I shook my head. "It doesn't surprise me, but no, I didn't."

Vista took off her visor, revealing bright green eyes. She turned it around in her hands and looked into it from the front. "I've been here for almost two years. I even have more hero experience than a couple members of the Protectorate, and yet they don't see me as anything more than a little girl."

I was starting to see the problem now. "So you felt like, if you were able to prove that you were as good as the others, they would let you operate on your own."

"Exactly!" She dropped the visor into her lap and looked up at me. "They let Stalker patrol on her own, and she even goes out into the docks. Me, though, _I'm_ too young and inexperienced to even walk between the Rig and the PHQ without a… a _chaperone._ How am I ever going to become the powerful heroine people keep talking about when it comes to my future if they won't let me fight anyone scarier than- than Leet?!" She seemed to start for a second and I saw her eyes widen before she took a deep breath and lowered her voice back to a normal volume. "If they would just stop treating me like a little kid, then I might be able to accomplish something."

Well, that certainly sounded familiar. I could certainly relate to what she was saying, but I needed to figure out the best way to put it.

"...I know how you feel."

Vista looked up at me, confused. "You do? How?"

I sat down cross-legged on the floor across from her, folding my hands in my lap. "I haven't told you about my team, right? From back home?"

She thought for a second, before shaking her head no. I hadn't thought so. I thought back, focusing on the happiness of those days rather than any of the stuff that came after.

"Where I come from, people with activated Aura and Semblances are almost always Huntsmen, and we get a whole bunch of training as we grow up. It's what I'm- what I _was_ trying to do with you guys, even if it doesn't seem to be working. Either way; most of the really good Huntsmen and Huntresses start their training and conditioning young. I had my aura unlocked when I was four, and my uncle started drilling me with a practice sword a little over two years later, but I think that's really early even for Huntsmen families like mine."

Vista was staring at me in shock. "Your uncle started you doing this when you were _six_? Wait, no, hang on - you got your powers when you were _fou-"_

She cut herself off, putting her hands over her mouth. I continued, not really sure what that was about, "Yep. It was pretty early, but not unheard of." Vista seemed to calm down a little at that. Not much, but some. "Anyway, the official schooling starts at age thirteen, and there's a pair of four-year schools you have to go through to get licensed. For the first level, there are a bunch of different places you could go to complete it, but if you want any level of respect as a Huntsman, you went to one of the big four schools for your second-level; Beacon, Shade, Atlas, and Haven. One for each of the Four Kingdoms."

"Four Kingdoms?" Vista interrupted. "It almost sounds like a fairy tale- not that I spend a lot of time reading those, but-"

I cut her off with a cough. It wasn't that I was upset at her interrupting, really, I just wished she'd stop focusing on the differences. "I knew that I'd be going to Beacon when I got old enough - it's where my parents had gone, it was the one for our Kingdom, and it was the best. At least, that's what everyone around me said. Things were going according to plan, right up until about a week before my sister was due to leave for the school. I was fifteen, then. I was in… some kind of store, I don't even remember what it was now, and somebody tried to rob it while I was there. Things got out of hand, I nearly got myself killed trying to stop the thieves' leader, I got saved by one of Beacon's professors, and twenty minutes later I'm face-to-face with Headmaster Ozpin himself as he offers me a plate of the second-best cookies I've ever had and early admission into his school."

Vista was nodding along, paying rapt attention as she put the pieces together. I continued, "A week after that, we went through Initiation - a test of our fighting abilities and Beacon's method of assigning people to teams. For reasons that I still don't really understand," because, of course, neither Ozpin nor Oscar had ever felt the need to explain it, "I got put in charge of my team, as the youngest team leader in the school's history. At the time, I thought everything was gonna go great! My sister was on the team, and I'd sort-of bonded with my other teammates, but… well. Surprise surprise, putting a fifteen-year-old in charge didn't seem to work out so well. I felt like I needed to prove myself, or I'd be the biggest failure of a leader Beacon ever saw."

Vista blinked at that. I could practically see the gears turning as she processed it. "So this is going to be some kind of lesson about how that doesn't work the way I'll expect it to?"

"Nope." Vista looked up at me in surprise. "I did end up proving myself… just not quite in the way I'd expected. I rushed into a fight in Initiation and almost got killed for it. What ended up earning people's trust was proving that I could do my job well - but especially in realizing that my job wasn't just in fighting things."

Vista's face fell from interested to annoyed in an instant. "Is that where you were going with this? The whole 'being a hero is about helping people instead of fighting them?'"

Oh, that's what that was about. "Not quite. Fighting is still important. For me, it was arguably just as important as the other stuff." I wasn't so sure if that still applied here. "For you… maybe not as much. You're _powerful,_ and unlike a lot of Huntsmen, I think you've got the potential to do a lot of good outside of combat."

It was… something to consider for me as well.

Vista took that in, thinking through it. She was still breathing a little too regularly though, overcompensating while trying to school her reactions, so I could tell she was still a little upset. "That's true, but shouldn't I be able to fight well too?"

"Yes, but not if you end up hurting yourself doing it. I had Aura to help me with that, an extra line of defense that let me push myself further without risk, and it's… kind of taken until now to really register what it means that you kids don't."

"So what, then?" Vista asked. "Are you going to stop training us?"

I didn't have to think before responding. "No, my original reasoning still stands. You kids need to get out there more. I'm just going to need to… rework my approach."

My decision made, I stood and helped Vista to her feet. "Are we going another round?" She asked.

"Not quite," I responded. "It's getting close enough to midnight that you should probably be getting home. We'll try something like this again tomorrow, as long as I can convince Piggot that the whole idea isn't a mistake."

"How are you going to do that, with what happened with the others?"

"...I'll figure it out. I hope."

* * *

 **As you've probably figured out by now, I absolutely love these two characters.**

 **Alright, this took way longer to get together than it should have considering I had 3/4 of it done when I posted the last chapter, but at least I'm decently happy with it. This conversation is one I've been excited about for a long time, so here's hoping other people enjoy it as much as I do. The first bit should probably have been included in the last chapter so that Ruby and Missy's conversation could stand on its own, but that's not a massive deal.**

 **Spacebattles still hasn't happened. I honestly did mean to get to that at some point while on winter break, but... yeah, that didn't end up happening, and now I'm back to school. I'll get it one of these days, I promise.**

 **I think that's everything I've got to say. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!**


	18. Bud 3-3

**Bud 3.3**

I decided to make this journey to the PHQ on foot, out-of-costume. I didn't have to worry about my hair getting recognized since it was covered up all the time by my hood, but I still needed to worry about clothing. That was something that had been explained to me in explicit detail. Thankfully, they hadn't actually limited my wardrobe in any way, but they'd advised me to try and change things up. I was still sticking to my colors, but I'd avoided hoods at all costs, and I'd gone with jeans over my usual skirt.

There was a complicated system involved in getting heroes on and off the Rig out-of-costume when it was needed, and I almost felt bad for making people go through it, but the duty officer was nice once she heard that it was my first time going through it. I got put in an unmarked PRT van from the landside building at the far end of the bridge that drove to a totally different building somewhere on the Boardwalk, which itself was connected via underground tunnel to a _different_ building that let me out nearby. It struck me as being a little unnecessary, but then the existence of the Rig kind of proved that they liked to go overboard.

I walked from the Boardwalk into Brockton's Downtown, following a similar path to one I'd taken plenty of times before in-costume. It took me a while to appreciate just how anonymous I was. Hair aside, I blended into the crowd perfectly. Only a couple of people seemed to pay me any attention, and they weren't the kind of people that anybody wanted to have the attention of. It was a little scary, seeing… creeps like that out in the open. Not many others seemed to even notice them, either. Not that it didn't happen back home too, of course, and it wasn't like I didn't have ways of protecting myself or somebody else if it came down to it, but I wasn't usually out in public, and I hadn't been… incognito like this in _years._ I kept a close eye on them, despite the fact that I doubted they'd be dumb enough to try anything here.

I started noticing other things, too. The outsides of buildings were covered in multicolored lights, and streetlights had wreaths hanging from the tops. There'd been a little of that when I first arrived, but I'd been too focused on other things to pay them much attention. There was a lot more of it now. They looked almost like Christmas decorations, and I thought I'd heard a couple of people mention it in passing since I'd gotten to Earth, but… they couldn't have that here, right? Remnant had different continents, a different moon, different people and threats. Our history, fragmented as it was, shared practically nothing with that of this world. For the two worlds to share something like a holiday… I guess it was no stranger than our somehow sharing a language, but still.

Sure enough, though, it wasn't long before I caught sight of a digital bank sign flashing 'Four days until Christmas!' in eye-searing red and green. That wasn't the only one, either. I didn't know how I'd missed it all on my other patrols. Even displayed on what would have been a frighteningly outdated piece of technology on Remnant, the sight of that woke up some very old, happy memories inside me… alongside some confusion. I'd have to ask somebody about it. Maybe the Director could put me into contact with Dragon again.

There were only a couple of miles between the two HQs, and even at a walking pace, I could get from one to the other in less than an hour. I was starting to pick up on some of the more subtle differences between parts of the city, even in the small, safe, well-off area I was moving through. As I moved into Downtown from the Boardwalk, people's style of dress shifted from more relaxed to more formal, getting a little bit cheaper but also a little more practical. It had taken me a while to figure out where the difference had come from, but it was obvious once I noticed it - tourists. They weren't really a thing back home, what with Grimm making travel so hard. Until the last few months, anyway, they had been a rare sight.

The entryway to the PRTHQ wasn't nearly as complex as it was for the Rig, probably because of how many people went there on a regular basis anyway. I just had to walk into the building, slip through a door just off the main lobby marked 'employees only' when I was sure nobody was looking, and scan my new Protectorate ID on an inconspicuous card reader to open another door in the rear of the room.

Once inside, I started making my way back toward the non-public stairs, in order to find my way to the upper levels. It was a maze back there without somebody leading me, and the signage was practically nonexistent. I could see the logic, at least. The couple of Atlas warships I'd been on were similar, with the idea that anyone who wasn't supposed to be on the ship wouldn't know how to navigate it, but that didn't make it any easier on the new girl.

At least I'd gotten here early. I learned that mistake too many times at Beacon, thank you very much.

I was just considering the merits of scattering through the vents and trying my luck wherever I popped out when I finally ran into a familiar face. Miss Militia, or Hannah if I remembered right, but she was in-costume so it didn't matter anyway, was coming down a set of stairs between my floor and the one above me. Probably a good sign that I was heading in the right direction, at the very least.

Remembering the awkwardness of our last meeting, I slowed down. I thought I could wait for her to leave the stairs, and then she could walk past me without having to say anything. Militia had different plans, though. Her eyes widened when she saw me, and she stopped in exactly the wrong place to avoid a conversation as she reached the bottom.

She took a moment, probably to put her words together, before speaking up. "Sc- Ruby I… feel the need to apologize. I would have done it sooner but I haven't run into you in a week or so. I shouldn't have walked out the way I did."

Ah. That was… unexpected. "Umm… I should probably apologize too, for pushing like that. Things are different enough here that I'm starting to notice boundaries that don't exist back home."

"Hah, like-" Her tone was a little harsher, but she cut herself off with a shake of her head. "Nevermind, sorry. Are you up for putting this behind us?"

I nodded holding out a hand for her to shake. "That's fine with me."

Her handshake was quick and professional. Up-down-up, and done. When she spoke again, I could hear a small smile in her voice. "Thank you. Are you looking for something back here?"

"Umm… the director's office. This is my first time trying to find it from this side."

"Ah, yes," Militia replied. "This place is a nightmare for your first few weeks, more than any other department I've worked at. You're headed up these stairs, left at the top, and… yeah, you'll recognize the first hallway on your right. Does that help?"

Two turns away. Hopefully, even I could avoid getting lost with something that simple. "I hope so. Thank you!"

She nodded. "Anytime. Good luck in there," she said, nodding in what I assumed was the general direction of Piggot's office.

"Thanks, I think I'm going to need it, heh."

I moved up the stairs, took a left, and followed the hallway for several yards before coming to the intersection. Sure enough, I recognized that hallway as the one her office was on, and I could see her door at the far end.

The door was closed this time, and I could faintly hear voices coming from inside the room. I knocked on the door, taking care not to make too much noise at the late hour. It was late in the evening, and though I doubted that anyone was actually in the area, I didn't want to annoy anyone.

A few seconds after I knocked, I heard the conversation end and the director's voice call for me to enter. I found her seated in her usual spot behind her desk. This time, there was a half-inch layer of paperwork covering a large area, neatly stapled and stacked to molecular precision. Nobody else was there. She had probably been on the phone or something, but I was surprised at how easy it had been to hear that.

"Scatter," she said. "I take it you're here about your experiences with the Wards yesterday evening?"

By this point, I wasn't exactly surprised to find that she knew. "Yes, Ma'am. I guess you heard what happened?"

"They walked out, and only Vista plans to continue with your style of training, correct?"

"Yeah, that's right," I said. "I don't get it. They want action, but they're not willing to go through what it takes to prepare themselves for it."

I decided not to mention Vista's situation, for the moment anyway. I didn't want to get her in trouble, especially if she was actually going to stop like she'd promised.

Piggot responded, "They're children. Even the reasonable ones are rarely the most rational of people. Regardless, I can't help you keep them coming. I have better things to do than help you lure them back in and I wouldn't order them into it even if I was allowed to do so. That's your own problem to solve."

Darn. It was probably for the best that they didn't feel like I was forcing them into anything, but I had no idea how I was going to convince them of how important this was. "Right. Um, you wanted a report about how their session went, right? I can give it to you now if you need me to."

"It's unneeded, I got a report from your minder and complaints from both Aegis and Clockblocker. I have a good understanding of how that happened." We'd had a minder for that? I hadn't even noticed them, and that was impressive. "What I'd like to know instead is what you intend to do about it."

Right. I had some idea of a plan, but not any real details, so I'd be making it up as I went along. It'd be fine, probably. "I'll be taking it slower. Their biggest issue with me was that I was pushing them too hard and too fast, which is probably fair. I was used to getting thrown into the deep end, so I did the same with them and kind of overwhelmed them."

Piggot responded, "That was the impression I got from Aegis, yes." She had turned away from me and was typing at her personal terminal, and I got the impression that I didn't have her full attention, but I kept talking anyway. This was as much for me figuring out what I was going to do as it was for her benefit.

"I'll probably still focus on mobility and evasion first since we agreed that it was the priority, but I can go easier at the outset. Just because Vista managed to thrive in that kind of scenario doesn't mean everyone else will. After that… well, that'll probably take up most of it, to be honest, but I'll start tying in other things once they get good at it."

"I would ask what other things, but I suspect your answer would change with time anyway. That's all I need from you, so unless you have anything else?"

I almost left then and there, like she clearly wanted me too, but… "Actually, I had a couple of other questions that you might be able to help me with." She gave me a weathered, tired look. "I-If you don't mind, that is, I mean-"

"Out with it, Scatter."

Right then, here went nothing. "The Youth Guard. I've looked them up, and I have an idea of what they do, but I'd like details. I'd rather not draw their attention this way."

Piggot nodded. "That's certainly a sentiment that we share. It is primarily common sense, but they do have a handbook that I would recommend you read - you can ask Director Renick for a copy on your way out. Next question?"

"Assuming it won't bring them down on me, I want to arm the Ward-"

"No," the Director interrupted. "Kid Win excepted, arming children would be shooting ourselves in the foot, PR-wise." She held up a hand to cut off my complaint. "I'm aware that most of them can likely handle themselves on a firing range with training, but putting a firearm into the hands of a twelve-year-old girl in the field is crossing the line."

"They don't need to be firearms," I responded. "Crescent Rose has a railgun in it, but it's primarily a melee weapon." That was bending the truth a little, but it wasn't totally wrong, either. I didn't often use the gun for anything other than it's recoil. Ranged options were important, but not critical. Jaune had certainly managed well enough without adding a gun to his sword, no matter how many times I'd offered to upgrade it for him. "Tonfas, shortspears, grappling hooks, that kind of thing."

For once, that got Piggot pausing for thought. "...perhaps. I will not sign off on anything until you can prove to me that it will have positive results, but I'm at least willing to consider the idea on a case-by-case basis." The look she gave me while saying that ensured my knowledge that she would not be making those decisions lightly. "Next?"

This would be a hard sell, but it was also one of the most important things I needed to bring up. "Within a couple of weeks, I'd like to have the Wards run a field op." I spoke quickly so that I could get out what I had to say before the Director interrupted. "They'd have full Protectorate supervision, and it wouldn't be against anyone really dangerous, but getting a victory under their belts would be good for them."

To my surprise, Piggot took this one in stride. "This is something we've been attempting for some time, but there are very few good options. Most villains or villain groups that would be safe targets - Circus, Trainwreck, the Undersiders - are nearly impossible to pin down. Those that aren't usually get taken down by other villains before we manage to accomplish anything. If you find a solution to that problem, then we can work something out. Otherwise, I'm afraid we have very few combat opportu-

A flash of light caught my eye, bright enough to cast my shadow on the door. The pair of us looked outside the window to Piggot's office and spotted the source - a glowing speck hovering a solid two miles away, several hundred feet above what must have been the boardwalk. I rushed to the window and squinted, and was still barely able to make out the form of a woman in the center of the light. The double-helix of light that speared down from her out to sea a moment later, however, was a lot more obvious.

"Who is that?" I asked, squinting for a better look"...and why is she in the process of destroying the Rig's forcefield bridge?"

Piggot's phone started ringing. She answered me as she picked it up and held it to her ear with a shoulder, waking up her terminal with the other hand. "Purity. Former Empire Eighty-Eight member, one of the highest-rated Blasters on the east coast. As far as we were aware, she was ostensibly trying to be a hero. Renick? What's happening?" The director turned her attention to the phone, and I found myself running out her door. Whatever was happening, they would need me out there.

I got to the elevator door, Scattering through the crack and into the shaft instead of waiting for it to arrive. I threw myself into the wall after reforming on the other side, ran directly down the side of the shaft, counted the doors as I passed them, and repeated the process to exit on the second floor. In the three seconds it had taken me to move that distance, I'd mentally gone over everything I knew about Purity and the Empire, which wasn't very much. They were white supremacists, which I understood to be a little like a reverse White Fang with different prejudices. Too much to hope for a lack of Faunus to mean a lack of discrimination, I guessed. I'd heard a little about Purity, but I knew more from what I'd just seen than I did from anything else. Flight, glowing, and some kind of double-helix of light that was doing some pretty major damage to the bridge.

I rushed through the costume area, tracking down my locker and slamming it open as quickly as I could. A handful of seconds spent Scattered later, I was in full costume and running for the window. Remembering at the last second to avoid smashing through it, I tore open the curtains, popped the latch, and Scattered through an inch-wide crack before falling to the street.

Twenty seconds after leaving Piggot's office, I had a hand to my ear. "This is Scatter calling Protectorate Console from the PRTHQ. Where do you need me?"

* * *

 **Be careful what you wish for, Director.**

 **This one wound up a little shorter than my usual. No real reason for that, it just didn't take long. I'm more happy with the second half than I am the first, but I can live with both of them. I can't wait to write these next couple of chapters though. This hasn't had nearly enough serious action for a RWBY fic lately (the Wards sparring doesn't really count).**

 **Spacebattles is still gonna happen, I promise.**

 **I think that's everything I've got for now, though. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!**


	19. Bud 3-4

**Bud 3.4**

It took a few seconds for the Console operator to finally respond, and I stopped running toward the PHQ to listen when I felt the speaker start vibrating. "-atter, Console. It's a coordinated, wide-scale attack across much of the city. The closest report to your location is Crusader making a mess of that district's police station. He hasn't gone lethal yet, but it's not out of the question. Challenger is en route as well, you need to support him in driving Crusader off. The address is being sent to your phone now, he's a Master 7 with selectively intangible duplicates. If you need assistance, call me, but we're not in the best condition over here so it might take a minute." There was a click as she cut the call off, probably moving on to the next hero or PRT squad.

I impatiently waited the handful of seconds it took for the text to arrive, and I shot into motion the instant it did. I hadn't been moving in _completely_ the wrong direction, at least. Follow this street to the south for a handful of blocks, shift back into Ruby-mode long enough to catch myself on the corner and swing into a right turn, shift back into Scatter-mode to keep on moving, rinse and repeat.

Sirens were echoing through the city, eerily reminiscent of the Grimm alarms I remembered from childhood. The streets had cleared out in seconds. Granted, it was pretty late at night, but there had still been people out and about on my walk toward the PRTHQ. Not anymore.

I found the building quickly enough, more thanks to the small army of flying ghosts dressed in plate mail and wielding giant spears surrounding every exit I could see than anything else, and put my foot through the first one's chest in an instant. By the time its friends had noticed I was there, two more had been injured, and the first was just starting to fade from the damage.

Someone who hadn't spent as long as I had working to get stronger might have had some serious issues, but for me, their armor wasn't all that big of a deal. Still though, hitting those clones was feeling… weird. The punches didn't feel any different, but the kick had felt a little like I had done it without wearing boots. Something to do with his intangibility? I was still impacting, though, when you'd think he would have me go through them entirely if he could have. What was the rule here?

I knew literally nothing about Crusader. I'd never even heard of them, and I did wish that I'd asked console for a little more information. This would hardly be the first time I'd fought somebody with an unknown Semblance, and on the face, this one seemed pretty self-explanatory. A lot like Sun's Semblance, actually, just with a lot more clon-

The one closest to me lunged with its spear, and I was so caught off-guard by the fact that my Aura didn't ping to warn me of the incoming hit that I almost didn't manage to dodge it. I scattered around the blow and had to drop fully into my semblance and move up into the air to avoid the spear's sideways sweep.

I landed on another ghost, kicking off it into a backflip that dented its armor, backrolled over the street to come to my feet, and rose to face the half-dozen ghosts that had abandoned their attack on the police station to… keep me contained, by the looks of it. They weren't attacking at any rate.

I thought about trying to talk to him, maybe delaying until Challenger got here, but dismissed the idea. This was only a few of his ghosts, and the others were still running free. There were probably more of them still active in the station, but if there was fighting going on inside then I would be hearing gunshots or some other sign of fighting.

Besides, I hadn't heard any of them talk since I got here. They probably wouldn't be great for conversation.

I rushed the right flank, scattering from where I stood and reforming with my hands wrapped around the first ghost's spear. I tried to run my Aura through the spear like I would with Crescent Rose, to keep it from breaking in my grip or getting damaged when I swung it into something at top speed, but as I kicked up through the ghost's arm to release its grip the spear started to fade and my Aura... _slipped_ off it like rain off a sloped roof.

The spear only had a couple of seconds of existence left, so I spun around, elbowed the ghost in the forehead to knock it away, and threw the spear as hard as I could. It was longer than Crescent Rose, and it was light enough to throw off my aim, but it still hit one of the ghosts that were now flying toward me.

The spear phased through, vanishing into the ground behind them and leaving no obvious damage. I wouldn't be using their weapons against them, then. Great. Unarmed, fighting at least a half-dozen flying, armored ghost-spearmen that my aura wasn't warning me about attacks from. This would be fun.

Alright, problem solving time. I dove into the fray, ducking under a swipe of one spear and rolling forward into an attack while I thought. Why wasn't I getting warned about the spears? I could touch them, so if they were illusions then they were good enough that the difference was meaningless.

...Console had called them 'selectively intangible.' If that meant what I thought it did, then… I didn't really know what to think.

The only way to test that theory was to get hit by an attack, but if I was right, then doing so would get me hurt. This was too dangerous to not know for sure, though. I thought back to my mental map of the surroundings, found what I needed, and scattered down flat along the ground before snaking my way through the ghost's legs and reforming on the other side. I jumped backward, planted my feet on a building, pushed off over the heads of the remaining three- no, four ghosts that were following me warily, and landed on top of the police department's wall a good forty feet away.

The wall was five feet high, made of brick, with another five feet of cast-iron fencing on top of it. I landed atop the fence, perched between two of the spikes on top, and waited. The group that had been chasing me reformed into a defensive wall and approached carefully, but entirely too slowly. Their plan was to try and distract me while their friends from inside the station hit me from behind, but I was keeping an eye out. The ghosts were silent, but they glowed enough that I could sort-of track them from ambient light levels and knowledge of how and where they were moving. In the moment before the ghost behind me struck, I scattered down to the brick, facing toward them through the fence.

The fence didn't even slow it down, which I'd expected. I'd also, as much as I'd hoped I was wrong, been half-expecting the spear to carry on, directly through my Aura and toward my leg.

I scattered as fast as I ever had, and didn't feel the wound until I reformed on the ground a second later. A sharp line of pain across the outside of my shin, where a thin cut had been scored into my leg by one of the spears, welling with blood. My Aura had been up, I'd been expecting the hit, but the attack had landed anyway. It wasn't a bad hit, and my Aura would heal it in the next few minutes, but the implications were… worrying.

His spears were phasing through my Aura like it wasn't even there. No Aura damage, no warning.

I barely had time to consider how _wrong_ that was before I had to back off, almost putting my back to a wall before remembering that they could go _through_ walls and rushing to the middle of the street instead.

Where was Challenger? The rapidly-shrinking part of my brain that wasn't focused on the fight at the moment let me know that it had started less than a minute ago, and that he'd need time to get here, but I could have really used the help.

Alright, focus. What did I know? The two examples I could think of for powers that worked like that were Sun and Blake, and both of their original bodies remained unchanged… or at least, Blake _had_ worked like that. We weren't quite as sure, now. Not that every power like this left an original body, but it was my best clue. I seriously doubted that Crusader himself, if he was still around, was in the prison - it'd be a big risk for no real reward, as long as he could see through the ghost's eyes

Ghosts charged me from three directions at once, and I made a standing leap straight up to avoid their attacks. I landed on one of their spears, snapping it in the process, and kneed the wielder in the face as I jumped off it and over its head. I paused when I hit the ground for just long enough for the other ghosts to rush me, only to roll backward over my shoulder in a flash and launch toward them from behind.

He had to have a limited number of ghosts, right? Maybe if I could kill enough of them, I could see where the replacements were coming from. I'd just need to be careful.

I could see six on the field right now, with two more phasing through the station's walls as I watched. If I was careful, then I could manage this without getting any more hurt, but It'd be risky. This guy's Semblance was pretty close to hard-countering mine, in a way I hadn't seen since… Cinder, probably.

That was a risk I'd just have to take, though.

Weapons wouldn't help, so there wasn't much point in ripping a stop sign out of the ground or something. It was possible that they were weak to electricity, or fire, or something else, but I didn't have any Dust with me even if I had the time to test for a weakness. I'd have to do this by hand.

They were approaching cautiously, now. I'd damaged or destroyed five of them already, and they hadn't exactly hurt me much in return. They were staggered out further, three in the air while three more hovered closer to the ground. I rushed the one in the lower middle.

It tried to jab, but I was already inside its guard as it began reacting to me movement. My fist met its jaw in an uppercut right out of Yang's playbook, and it started fading as I rolled right. I jumped as I came up, kicked off his that one's face, and launched myself toward the upper middle one. I snapped out a leg as I passed it, sending it spinning through the air as it faded, and kept on my trajectory toward the upper left. This one, I grabbed by the spear, swung around, and swept toward the lower left, literally disarming them both in the process. The last one was watching the carnage as it retreated toward the building, and it turned to fly away as quickly as it could as I finished off the last of its friends. It was surprisingly quick when it wanted to be, but it wasn't fast enough.

Six dead ghosts, seven seconds. More ghosts were leaving the building now, but not nearly as many. Crusader must have been running low.

I took the opportunity to really look around for the first time since getting here. If Crusader was nearby, he wasn't being obvious about it. There weren't any helpful suits of armor peeking out of any nearby windows, at least. This being the police station, there were enough sirens running that I couldn't hear much of anything either. I could see movement through the police station windows, but it wasn't clear enough to act on. It was probably just officers running around, trying to control damages or whatever.

Five more ghosts were leaving the building, but they were running things differently this time. Four of them sunk into the ground as the fifth flew high into the air, and-

Aha.

I caught a sixth ghost trying to sneak in from the opposite direction, down the block and in the general direction of the Bay. It was being about as subtle as it could be, but it was only going to manage that so well. I rushed that direction at top speed, fast enough to hope that they might think I'd just vanished, and reformed a half-second later to find another ghost following after the first one, and two more in the middle of leaving a two-story shop tucked between two taller buildings that looked to be in the middle of renovations.

The ghosts were quicker on the uptake than I'd expected, and they were already coming back toward me, but they weren't nearly fast enough. I ignored the door and crashed through the window instead, looked up through a gap in the floor and finally spotted him.

The ghosts were pretty-much carbon copies of him, the only real difference being that he was flesh-and-blood. At least, I assumed that was what was underneath the heavy plate armor he was wearing. It was shimmering a little, and I guessed that he might be in the middle of making another ghost, but that wasn't the big concern here.

There were a dozen ghosts between me and him, six on either floor. Crusader himself was hovering a couple of feet above the ground, but he'd made the mistake of stopping to look toward me in surprise instead of getting out of there.

Lots of spears, but if I was pretty sure I had a workaround. It made it tricker for me to hit them, too, but not impossible. I memorized their locations, figured out where and how they were attacking, and went blind to the world as I scattered.

I had a faint impression of a breeze blowing through me as three of them swiped at me at once, phasing through my aura and hitting nothing but air and maybe a couple of petals. In response, I materialized a boot in mid-kick, and felt the impact of the ghost's chestplate as the hit landed. It was probably either outside the building, fading, or both, but either way it was out of the fight for the moment.

I scattered the boot, losing sensation from it as I did so, and moved onto the next. It didn't take long, even when I lost track of the last one. I reappeared to look around and figure out where it had gone, only to narrowly dodge a stab to the face as it came back down from the upper floor with its buddies. Crusader himself was gone, as far as I could tell.

They were more clever this time. Changing up their strategies. I managed to get three before losing track of the others, but that was plenty. I reformed, grabbed the shaft of one spear and vaulted up it to kick the ghost in the sternum with both feet, kicked off it into two more, and used the last as a stepping-stone in order to launch up to the second floor.

Crusader was outside, having exited through the balcony door and attempted to retreat toward the southwest. As high as he was flying, I might have had some issues catching up to him if it hadn't been for the glowing green pyramid keeping him contained halfway down the block.

Challenger stood on his own triangular forcefield, carefully avoiding the small army of ghosts that Crusader was sending toward him, trying to surround him and pin him down. It looked like those fields weren't any better at stopping these things than my Aura was, and it looked like he wasn't having much luck with them. Tiny fragments were spread all over the battlefield, slowly drifting from place to place instead of collecting to where he needed them.

I ran, jumping a story directly up with my Semblance to get to the next building, stepping off the other side and falling a good fifteen feet to hit the once after that. I built up more speed across that roof in order to get the momentum I needed to wall-run directly up the side of the next building and reach the roof, where I found-

A glowing forcefield, slowly hovering past where I stood. Past it, another, then three more on an almost-perfectly straight line directly to Crusader's box. Crusader himself didn't seem to have noticed me, focused as he was on getting Challenger to free him.

The first stepping stone cracked the instant I set foot on it, but I was already moving on to the next. Ahead of me, I saw the tiniest crack appear in the cell's walls. Crusader heard the crackling destruction of each stone on my path and turned to face me, only for me to appear inside his box with my forearm pressed against his throat.

A ghost tried to leave his body, but I kneed it into nonexistence the moment it appeared, followed up with a knee on _him_ that dented the armor between his legs and he gave up after that. The ghosts around us vanished as he yelped.

Challenger spoke up. "Crusader's down, Console, no fatalities on our end. I've checked the station, they're alive and tending to wounded. Requesting PRT backup with foam sprayers and information on the situation elsewhere?"

Again, it took a tense minute for her to respond. I took the time to take control of my breathing and started mentally checking myself for anything that might slow me down. I'd tensed up _hard_ when I realized that my Aura wouldn't be protecting me, and that was only going to slow me down.

Starting from my feet, I moved from muscle to muscle up through my legs, breathing in, banishing the slightest bit of tension where I could manage it, then breathing out. I saved the rest for when we moved out. It was a trick that had saved me a lot of pain over the years. There was nothing worse than getting a foot cramp while you were running on top of a raven the size of a large airship.

I was halfway up my torso when the response came. "PRT agents are on their way, Challenger. Empire gangers have started hitting more locations. We're not sure what they're trying to accomplish, but it's spread out enough that we're being spread too thin. You two are going to assist Assault and Battery; they're trying to divert Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket from their path toward ABB territory, without much success. Sending you the address."

Challenger nodded, despite the fact that she obviously couldn't see him. "We're on our way. What's the situation elsewhere?"

"Patching you through to Armsmaster."

"Appreciated, Console."

It took a couple more minutes, but one of the many sirens echoing around the city right now sounded like it was getting closer. Challenger didn't notice at first, but when the green-white lights started reflecting off the buildings he spawned a forcefield and stepped onto it, ready to fly. I scattered onto it as he took off, finishing the de-tensing job in one burst in the process. It didn't feel nearly as nice, but it worked. As we began to fly, Armaster finally spoke up again.

"The Dallons plus Manpower have engaged Jotun, Othala, Victor, and a telekinetic Shaker we haven't seen before, and we're thinking they were intentionally provoked. The Pelhams went after Purity, and she's giving them a merry chase over Captain's hill. Gleipnir and Munin are each hitting separate police stations, Miss Militia has engaged the former and Dauntless the latter. Alabaster tried to hit a hospital, he's contained by the BBPD. No sign of Kaiser or Krieg yet, but at the rate things are going it's only a matter of time. I'm waiting to deploy from the PHQ for when they do. Any questions?"

Tons, actually, but only a few that were relevant. I asked, "What happened to the bridge? Why'd Purity go after it?" Belatedly, I added, "Uh, this is Scatter."

"We don't know. She left right after taking it down, well before anyone got to her. She could have been trying to avoid the defensive emplacements, but they hadn't warmed up yet. Our running theory is that she wanted to separate us from the base, but we have enough people that can get there if need be that it doesn't change much. It might just have been an attempted distraction from everything else."

Well, that was worrying. "We're keeping an eye out over there, right? Who's there right now?"

Armsmaster took a second to reply, and his tone gave me the impression he was reading from a report. "Thirty-four PRT troopers, Triumph, Aegis, and Vista. The older Wards were training on the Protectorate console, and Vista was apparently on the training floor again. It's defended, and we can get reinforcements there if need be. Challenger, you're patched into this call, correct?"

"Yes, sir," Challenger responded, sounding a little distracted. "All due respect, sir, I'd appreciate a lack of conversation for focus unless it's important." We were picking up some serious speed, I noticed. Way faster than I'd seen a field this size move before now.

"I'll keep this brief, then. With the number of high-rated capes on the field, the Director has authorized our PRT agents on the Rig to begin loading up the missile defenses. We're not firing yet, but if it becomes necessary then we might need your fields to help mitigate damages."

Wait, we had _missile defenses_? When was somebody gonna tell me about that?

The field beneath our feet flickered a bit and I braced myself for a fall if it collapsed, but Challenger kept it intact. "...Yes, sir," he responded carefully.

"I'll keep you informed. Armsmaster out."

Challenger had wanted some quiet for this, so I didn't speak up. I'd have to ask him what was going on later. Instead, I sat on the field and waited until the ride was over. We were flying ten or fifteen stories off the ground, so I had a good view of the surrounding area.

There was a surprising amount of fire out there, actually. I could see blazes picking up in at least four places within ten blocks or so, and I could see glows from elsewhere in the city that looked like more. Console had said that the police were handling the ordinary gangers, but it didn't really look like it from up here. If anything, it looked more like the aftermath of the battle of Vacuo - but this place hadn't had anything nearly on that level to trigger this kind of reaction from the general population. If we weren't being expected to help out here… than what did that mean? Were the police used to dealing with stuff on this level?

How was it that a place without the Grimm still managed to end up like this?

That question had me distracted enough that I didn't notice we were dropping off until we started passing between buildings rather than over them. We were in the worse-off parts of town now, sort of like where I'd patrolled with Dauntless last week. It didn't take me long to spot why we were dropping, either.

A trio of obvious capes walked down the street, facing away from us and moving in the general direction of the docks. They weren't making much progress, but then I suspected that wasn't the point. They were a little occupied with the civilians. The smallest, a woman with a cage for a helmet and duel-wielding kamas, was holding back behind the other two for the most part, but ducking in front for brief instants to cut at an officer or civilian before getting back into cover too quickly for anyone to react. Nobody that she cut got back up again.

The middle one, wearing chains and a mask that I couldn't identify from the back, was practically strutting up the sidewalk, totally ignoring the occasional bullet that flew toward him and gathering distortions in his hands. Every few seconds, he'd raise an arm and one of the distortions would fly in the direction he pointed, exploding on impact. The noise of those impacts was drowned out by the third cape, and the one that was, with good reason, taking the majority of the attention here.

The best way I could come up with to describe… _it_ was as a blender the size of a small car, growing and shrinking masses of blades from its body in such a way that it gave off the illusion of propelling itself on four legs like a dog or a fox.

It wasn't the _most_ intimidating thing I'd ever had to fight, but it probably broke the top five, and the fact that I was totally unarmed didn't help in the slightest. Assault and Battery were nowhere to be found.

"That's them, I take it?" I asked, already jumping off the forcefield to engage.

Challenger didn't respond, but I heard him talking to Console as I hit the ground. "Console, Challenger. Scatter and I are engaging Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket. We're on Lord's and Spayder, downtown fringes, approaching the Docks. We'll try to slow them down and minimize casualties, but any help you can offer would be appreciated. Assault and Battery aren't here, so I need to know where they went."

I was already moving by the time he finished, dashing ahead of the cloud of forcefields that were appearing on Challenger's costume before flying toward the chainsaw-coyote. That left the other two to me, for the moment at least.

The woman looked like the smallest threat, and I could probably take her weapons, besides. I crossed the yards between the two of us in a fraction of a second and emerged from my Semblance to find her not quite where I'd expected her to be. I tanked a pair of Kama stabs from the ground underneath me, where she'd somehow reacted quickly enough to drop to the ground, and kept on moving under the force of my own momentum.

Catching myself on the ground, I launched myself for her once again, not scattering _entirely_ so that I could see where she was moving at the expense of speed, and watched as she began to dodge within a millisecond of my starting to move. Enhanced reaction times, almost Hunstman-level, if I had to guess.

It wouldn't have saved her if it hadn't been for the warning flare from the Aura near my back. I scattered completely around the projectile as it appeared, reformed facing the direction it had come from, and heard Cricket rising from an evading roll behind me as I squared off with the chain guy.

The mask was patterned after a roaring tiger, a pale, almost-white blue. The distortions wrapped around his hands looked almost like claws and were actively growing less and less transparent as I watched.

At the same time, my Aura started giving off… something. Aura sensation was hard to describe at the best of times, but this was new. A sort of… shimmery, shuddery, high-pitched buzzing feeling, almost light enough to go unnoticed. After a few seconds, it seemed to vanish, leaving me more confused than anything. I didn't feel anything odd, and my aura wasn't dropping as far as I could tell.

Whatever. I got moving so I could maybe get out of the way of whatever it was, Scattering in two directions, toward both the guy I assumed to be Stormtiger and the girl I assumed to be Cricket, just like I had when showing off my Semblance when I first got here. The decoy headed for Stormtiger, and just as it vanished I reformed from the other and flew back toward Cricket.

She reacted as quickly as she had last time, but it still wasn't enough. I caught her around the waist, launched myself upward, then scattered and reformed on the other side as I kicked her into the pavement with both legs. She hit the road with a lot of grace given the circumstances, but that died as soon as I landed on top of her. I crouched down, put my hands on her shoulders for my third and fourth points of contact, and scattered _both_ of us, just for a second.

When we reformed, Cricket was flying in Hookwolf's general direction, I had her sickles, and I was rushing Stormtiger as fast as I could.

In the background, Hookwolf was smashing glowing green forcefields with every motion, each field giving off a sound like a little thunderclap as it shattered into tiny shards and vanished. He was trying to approach, put himself between me and his friends, but Challenger was heading him off expertly. I knew from experience how much of a pain ranged forcefields were to fight, and I was a lot faster than Hookwolf was. Challenger reacted fast to Cricket entering the fray, shattering the fields between her and Hookwolf before moving and reforming them into a pair of huge walls pinning him in that location.

Hookwolf was facing the wrong direction to see her coming. He reared back and prepared to smash the field to his left, but at the last moment he spun, retracted the vast majority of his blades and ducked to keep her from getting impaled on them.

Hookwolf was… really gross, actually. He wore his hair long, greasy, and covering all of him I could see, which was more than I would have liked. He had a really cheap metal wolf mask covering his face, and wore a pair of jeans, but he wasn't wearing much of anything else.

Challenger hadn't herded him to the _perfect_ position, but it was close enough. Cricket hit the ground inches in front of him, and in the instant Hookwolf tensed before throwing himself back into the fray, most of the fields collapsed and reformed such that the pair were being squeezed between a pair of walls the size of one of Beacon's arches. Hookwolf extended his blades once more, but apparently he couldn't muster the force to punch through them without building up momentum. The pair of them were stuck.

A shimmering distortion flew through the air behind me, smashing into the barrier nearest me. It held, but I noticed a series of tiny, rapidly-sealing cracks in the surface at the point of impact, no bigger around than my fist. I whirled around, and spotted Stormtiger behind us raising both his hands. I moved at the same moment he fired a shot from his other hand.

My aura flared a warning of a high-powered shot that would probably do more damage than I had expected from one of these blasts. Time for a test.

"Challenger! Shield, at an angle!"

He heard my shout and dropped from his platform in an instant as it shattered, the pieces shooting past me. They reformed into a barrier ahead of me, three feet wide and angled at what I judged to be a seventy-degree upward slope. Stormtiger's next shot slammed into it - but this time, it slid, just a little. The impact was more spread out, as the shot impacted the shield around two-thirds of the way up and splashed downward.

The shield still fractured, even more than it had last time, the cracks both deeper and wider-spread. They didn't look like they were sealing, either. The shot had been blocked, though, and even with the way he was alternating shots between his hands, he'd need to wait another second or two before firing.

I jumped up, planted a foot on the shield to launch myself further, and came down on top of Stormtiger again, Cricket's kamas raised. He fired one shot that I scattered around, but I noticed that he wasn't gathering another shot in his other hand. He backed up quickly, and he splayed the fingers on his other hand, down by his waist.

It took me a moment to understand what was happening, but I figured it out when I didn't land nearly as close to him as I thought I had. A wind had kicked up, and it strengthened rapidly as I ran toward him. I couldn't scatter this time, at risk of getting literally blown away, but it didn't really matter. I reached him in seconds, and even with the way the wind picked up to gale-force in the last couple of feet he couldn't do anything to stop the sickle that caught the back of his knee and pulled him to the ground before I planted a knee between his shoulder blades and held the other blade to his neck.

I took a second to breathe. Even with my Aura, this was getting tiring, and I couldn't even imagine how Challenger was feeling. Turning around after a half-second break, I had just enough time to register the glow that had suffused the area behind me before a double-helix of light shot down from above, shattered the field containing Hookwolf with a sound like a bomb going off, and sent waves of dust rolling across the battlefield.

Once it finally cleared, I saw a shape that could only have been Purity - glowing painfully bright, bright enough that the light hid all but the barest hint of any facial expression. What I could see, though, in her posture and the shape of her face, gave me an intense feeling of resignation and regret.

Challenger was picking himself up off the ground, but it was slow and he looked hurt. His fields were gone, and the people in them were free again. I saw a group of flyers I recognized from the news as New Wave approaching, but they weren't looking great themselves.

I raised a hand to my ear and murmured, "This is Scatter calling Protectorate Console. Challenger's injured, the Empire members are free, and Purity's here. I need backup ASAP, I repeat, backup ASAP."

For once, Console was prompt in responding. It wasn't the PRT agent this time, though. The voice that came through my earpiece was young, male, and it sounded wet and awful, like he was speaking breathlessly through a hole in his throat. It took me a moment to place it, and my blood chilled when I realized who it was.

"All Protectorate this is Aegis. There's _something_ here, and it's- it's slaughtered its way through half a dozen PRT troops already. We need backup here, _right now_."

* * *

 **Bud 3.4: wherein Ruby Rose kicks copious amounts of Nazi tail.**

 **Sorry about the delay here, the chapter kind of exploded on me at the same time some stuff started happening IRL. I feel like this one could be better, but I got done what needed to get done. (I guess this is what happens when I try to fit two fight scenes into a single chapter, heh.)**

 **Don't have much else to say here, other than Spacebattles is coming I promise and that any comments or critique are appreciated. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!**

 **3/1/2019 EDIT: Midterms slowed me down, sorry. I'm skipping this weekend and posting on either the 9th/10th or 16th/17th, depending on what I can manage. I'll try to keep far enough ahead on schoolwork to keep it from happening again, but I just didn't plan well enough to manage it this week.**


	20. Bud 3-5

**Bud 3.5**

Before I was even done registering what Aegis had said, Armsmaster was in the midst of responding. "Aegis, get everyone you can and evacuate deeper into the base. Captain Jenkins is the watch leader, correct? He'll tell you where to go. Backup is on its way."

Purity was falling back again. One of the New Wave flyers, a teenage girl with brown hair, descended for just long enough to throw a red laser barrage worthy of an Atlas flagship toward Hookwolf before blasting off with her team. She got there just in time to get wrapped in a bright blue forcefield with the rest of her family a fraction of a second before Purity unloaded another helix of light in their direction. Hookwolf, meanwhile, got blasted down the street, and I heard a painful-sounding screech of metal overlapped with a roar of pain as shards of metal bounced across the street in his wake.

I rushed to Challenger's side and checked his condition. He was moving and breathing, but his left ankle and right wrist looked twisted into some seriously bad sprains after falling when his fields collapsed. He was blinking rapidly like he was still trying to get the flash out of his eyes. He'd have been fine by now if he was a Huntsman, but without Aura… He'd be out of action for a while if I was any judge. I stood up, raised Cricket's sickles, and put myself between him and the villains. They still needed to be stopped, so I'd just have to do it myself. If I could get close enough to Hookwolf, then maybe I could find some kind of weakness, and-

The comms picked up again as Hookwolf pushed himself to his feet. "Scatter, Piggot. Challenger isn't responding, what's your situation?"

Cricket had somehow ended up through a window in the chaos. A bunch of the glass in the vicinity had shattered, and it looked like she'd been thrown into a small grocery store. She clambered back out of it before picking a couple of the larger glass shards out of her arms and legs. I responded, "Challenger's wounded but alive, as are most of the Empire capes present. Purity showed up for long enough to wreck everything, but New Wave is chasing her off again. Preparing to engage Hookw-"

"No," Piggot cut me off. Stormtiger was standing back up as well, and he was pretty much uninjured. More distortions started forming around his hands as he turned to face us. "With Dauntless engaged against Munin and Challenger wounded, that makes you the only cape we have capable of reaching the Rig. A police chopper is en route from Boston to allow Armsmaster to deploy, but you have the opportunity to get there faster."

She didn't sound happy, but I couldn't really bring myself to care all that much. She wanted me to leave this fight behind? These capes were killing people when I got here! "Director! I can't leave! These people need to go down!"

She paused, just for a moment. "They've been wounded, they'll retreat once you do. Get Challenger, get out of there, and get to the Rig. This is an order."

"Di-"

" _Scatter!"_ Piggot shouted. "Challenger is wounded. You are going to fall back immediately, drop Challenger off at the PRTHQ, and get to the Rig as quickly as you can."

"...Yes, ma'am." I turned off the comm with a growl of frustration and took a step back. Stormtiger raised both his arms, the distortions wrapped around them several times as big as I'd seen them yet. Hookwolf crouched down, barbs and hooks retracting as he prepared for a pounce. Cricket prowled around behind me, waiting for my guard to drop. In the distance, I saw the light show that was New Wave's fight against Purity begin moving back in our direction again. I kneeled beside Challenger, put a hand on his shoulder, and began running my Aura through him in one of the less-comfortable maneuvers I'd picked up over the years.

Without any prompting, all three of our opponents attacked simultaneously. In the same moment, Challenger and I both vanished into a cloud of red and green rose petals that blasted off in the direction of the PRTHQ.

* * *

There were a few things that any Huntsman worth their license needed to be able to do. One was, obviously, the use of their Aura for defense. More sophisticated techniques were useful, but putting up the basic forcefield was step one. The second was a personalized series of landing strategies and similar tactics to deal with taking a big hit - without it, you almost certainly wouldn't survive initiation at Beacon or any of the other schools, and Hunstmen fell off of tall things _way_ more often than one might expect.

The third, one of the hardest to define, was mobility. Whether you were talking about ground speed or maneuverability, one of the best ways to prove your ability there was running on water. Most people typically found a way of using their Semblance to manage it, and their weapon if not that, but it wasn't unusual to have to rely on other people. Team JNPR, for instance, couldn't really manage it individually but had figured out some tricks with Nora's semblance to pull it off as a group if they needed to. Very few people managed it via running and nothing else - you'd have to be able to move something like seventy miles an hour to manage it, and most Huntsmen couldn't pull that off for long, if at all.

Seventy miles an hour, however, fit nicely just below my maximum ground speeds.

I cheated a bit, of course. If you weighed less, you could get away with less speed, or move at the same speed while using less energy. My Semblance let me cut my weight down to almost nothing while I moved faster, so I barely even had to touch the water in order to get where I needed to go.

That was why I was currently rocketing across the Bay as fast as I could go, drawing a loose, wobbly arc over the waves toward the Rig. The water was getting choppy and slowing me down a little, but it wasn't anything too debilitating yet. The storm clouds on the horizon didn't look good, though.

There was plenty of fog around, too. I had to wonder if it had something to do with how they'd gotten a cape over here. Assuming it was one of their capes, of course. The timing for something else to be on the Rig in the middle of all this would be crazy, but it would hardly be out of the question. I'd have to keep an eye out.

A blinding light caught me from above just as I reformed to skip off a wave, and spots filled my vision. I couldn't really stay reformed to blink them away, but seeing as I didn't get pancaked against the waves I assumed it wasn't Purity and kept moving. Over the crashing waves, I could make out some kind of incredibly fast, repeated _whump-whump-whump_ from the general direction of the light, but I didn't have the slightest clue as to what it was.

There was one thing that was gonna make this tricky. The forcefield was still active, and without access to the controls on the Rig, I couldn't get through it without a lot more firepower than I had access to at the moment. That meant going around it - which was possible, but not easy. I reached the bubble, reformed, and _dove_. The water was freezing, but I'd dealt with worse. Just like the Director had told me, once I got more than around fifty feet below the surface the shield started getting weaker, and once I crossed the seventy-five foot mark it fizzled out entirely. I swam back up, the light found me again, and I kept moving.

The light followed me all the way to the Rig, falling off every once in a while but getting back on its target in a few moments each time. I really hoped it wasn't so obvious from outside, or this thing would totally know I was coming.

I hadn't really figured out how big the Rig was until I was approaching the base. It must've been eighty feet tall at least, and the concrete supports underneath it were wider than three of me were tall. With how I was traveling, I didn't really get a good look at it until I was underneath it, standing on one of the tiny platforms suspended just below the waterline. I scattered for a moment, leaving the water behind to dry off, then looked to the sky.

The light seemed to lose track of me as I got underneath the building, but I could see the source now. That didn't help me identify what it was, though; besides being some kind of vehicle, I'd never seen anything like it. It almost reminded me of an Atlas dropship, but instead of wings or visible engines, it looked like it was kept in the air by a giant overclocked propeller. Earth's answer to an airship, maybe? It didn't seem hostile, or at least It wasn't being shot down, but it wasn't approaching to land, either. I chose to ignore it for the moment.

Velocity's door was right in front of me, but I could see a more interesting entry point above me. Something had scrabbled its way up the opposite pillar, leaving four-inch deep holes and scrapes in the concrete and revealing a metallic supporting structure underneath in a few places. Where the pillar met the base of the structure, twenty feet above my head, a ragged hole had been torn into the building's structure to allow entry to whatever that was.

"DIrector, Scatter. I found the entry point, whatever this was got in from the bottom by climbing the pillars and tearing a hole through the floor. I'm going in after it. I'm seeing some kind of airship outside the bubble here, is it one of ours?"

"...No, it isn't. Renick!" I heard more talking, muffled by distance as Piggot probably leaned away from the phone. A second later, she came back. "It's a news chopper, apparently. Not a threat, just a crew of idiot reporters. We'll deal with it, you get in there."

Right then. I took a half-step back to put my back against the pillar and launched forward. I ran directly up the side of the pillar, took three steps up and kicked off into the gap, landing inside something that looked like it used to be a heating duct. I couldn't have fit inside it normally, but from the looks of things, whatever it was that had come through was a lot bigger than I was. It had followed the general direction of the duct, but it wasn't exactly being contained by the metal. There was an impressive amount of damage, actually.

Thankfully, it made for an easy trail to follow. I stepped forward, jumped slightly as a thunderclap rumbled through the building almost instantly after a flash illuminated the tunnel, took a breath, and scattered forward.

The light was limited, and even though the storm was kicking up outside I soon moved deep enough into the Rig that the lightning wasn't illuminating my path anymore. I had to move more slowly, looking for the barest hints of the terrain silhouetted around me and really wishing that I had Crescent Rose with me, for the flashlight if nothing else.

I must have been picking my way forward for a good ten minutes before I got anywhere. Every so often, the new tunnel would near a hallway, only to veer off at the last second. Eventually, though, I stumbled my way through the last few feet, finally in a light, dim and flickery as it was, and dropped through a hole in the ceiling.

This hall didn't look much better than the tunnel had, to be honest. Ahead of me, two out of every three light fixtures were shattered, and most of the rest were dangling dangerously from the ceiling and sparking. Similar cuts and scrapes to the ones on the support pillars littered the walls, floor, and even the ceiling in places, and I could see places where something had… worn away at any exposed surfaces.

"Director, Scatter. I'm inside, where am I going?"

I didn't recognize the voice that replied. "Scatter, this is PRT Console. The Director's focused elsewhere, so I'll be your controller for the moment. The Wards and several PRT officers are moving to the upper levels. Security cameras aren't lasting long when this thing passes by, but the ones that are vanishing imply that it's staying on the lower floors, moving deeper inside.

"It's still moving toward the brig?" I asked.

"It is, yes. Where are you at the moment? I can direct you there."

I had to spin a little to find any kind of signage. "Uhh… oceanside hallway, second story, by the gym cube's observation deck. Not sure I'll need direction though, this thing's path is pretty clear."

"Acknowledged, Scatter. Be careful, and watch out for any wounded troopers. We know of eight casualties, and the Wards are under the watch of fourteen more, leaving twelve unaccounted for."

Right. That wasn't ominous at all. "Understood. Scatter out." I tightened my fists and started moving forward.

Thunder rumbled outside as I moved through the halls as quickly as I dared. As I walked, I gathered what information I could from the way the gouges seemed to loop and twist around the hallway. Whatever it was, it could move _quick_ in short bursts; almost as fast as I could manage from a standing start. It couldn't maintain that speed for very long, but it probably had more maneuverability at speed than I did, and it could climb walls and ceilings. It had at least four pairs of legs, each one capable of leaving gouges the size of my entire forearm in concrete, and it almost looked like the edges of the gouges were corroded somehow. Some kind of acidic skin, maybe? It wouldn't be the weirdest thing I'd ever seen on a Grimm.

I shook my head. Grimm didn't exist here, I had to remember that. Unless Raven had decided to mess with me by dropping one here, but I doubted it. It really didn't seem like her style. Whatever this was, it was a parahuman. Or it was linked to one, at least. Which of course meant it was probably _smart_ , too. Wonderful.

I reached the stairwell to the third and fourth floors only to find it in ruins. It had been absolutely shredded as this thing had climbed through it, and steel and plastic dangled precariously from the walls. I had to take a few steps back and jump to reach the landing, pull myself up, then hop onto a railing and tightrope-walk upward to reach the third floor and continue following the trail.

The Rig was creaking around me, now. The occasional rumbles of thunder I could hear through the structure were getting even louder and more frequent, and at least one of them was close and loud enough that the Rig itself must have been the lightning's end point. I was keeping a tight enough rein on my nerves that I didn't jump when my communicator started talking, but it was a close thing.

"Scatter, this is Captain Jenkins. I understand you're on-base now, chasing down our intruders?" His voice had a slight twang of an accent to it.

"Yes, sir. I'm on the fourth floor, just past the stairwell and approaching the Brig from landside." I turned a corner and saw the brig's hallway. I could hear _something_ happening a good distance inside, but I wasn't sure what.

His reply was immediate. "Uhh, copy, Scatter. We're right above you, at floor seven near the roof access. Requesting status on our missing troopers, you should have passed a few of them by now if you're following that thing's path."

...Oh no. There hadn't exactly been anywhere those guys could have been where I could have missed them. Either they'd run off and hidden somewhere, or… or they'd gone _with_ the intruder. One way or another.

"Scatter, do you copy?"

Freakout later, Ruby. Keep things as positive as you can. "Um, sorry sir, I haven't seen any sign of them."

The reply took longer this time. "...Understood. We're fortifying up here, with Vista's help. If need be, we can coordinate efforts, but I won't be sending my troopers or these Wards against this thing if I can help it. Not after whatever it did to everyone else."

That wasn't all that surprising. When the Grimm showed up, the police and military got out of the area if they could. The big threats were Huntsman work, and everybody knew it. "Yes, sir. I'm approaching the brig now, so I'm signing off"

"Copy. Good hunting."

I suppressed a wince at the grandfather of all crappy Huntsman cliches before turning my full attention to the hallway in front of me. The brig's doors had been ripped off their hinges, and I heard the screeching and groaning of metal being shredded from inside. I crept forward, careful to not make a sound, not that it would hear me over the noise it was making.

I had a decision to make, here. Option one was to rush in, hope that whatever it was hadn't already gotten to its target, and try to take it down. On one hand, it sounded like it hadn't actually managed to break through the brig's defenses yet, but on the other, I had no idea how dangerous it actually was. Option two was to move slower, engage later, get any tools I needed to take this thing down, and see if I could find a better opportunity to engage. That carried the downside of this thing managing whatever it came here for - probably freeing Fenja and Menja, but I wasn't ruling anything out.

I really didn't want this thing to free those two. I'd beaten them with Crescent Rose, but even ignoring the intruder, I didn't like my odds without it. On the upside, I was pretty sure I could outrun whatever it was, given time, so in a worst-case scenario I could just get out of there.

Decision made, I scattered and shot through the door, made a ninety-degree turn directly up and caught myself on a hanging ceiling light. I looked down and identified the cell for at least one of the twins pretty much instantly by the sight of the giant cloud that had parked itself in front of it.

From everything I'd seen outside and the noise that had only just stopped, the cloud wasn't quite what I was expecting. Things became a little more clear when the cloud vanished, shrinking in upon itself to turn into a short man wearing a concealing gray hood atop a costume with very little in the way of decoration. As he drew himself together, I saw the _second_ cape appear in the fading traces of mist; this one a woman in black, with heels, hood, and a great big cloak that I would almost respect if she hadn't been busy carving a bloody canyon through the rig tonight.

There were two of them? How much of what I'd seen was one, and how much was the other?

The pair looked up toward me with no fear in their body language whatsoever. They didn't speak a word, but I got the hint when the man exploded back into a room-filling fog. The instant he did, I heard the scrabbling, scampering, scraping of something _big_ climbing toward me at high speed followed by a dozen incoming attacks on my Aura at practically the same instant. I left the room very, _very_ quickly.

* * *

 **Like I mentioned in my profile and edited into the AN last chapter, I had to skip a post because of midterms. Real life kicked my butt for about a week right before they happened, so my plans went out the window, so this one was delayed by two weeks. I'm gonna _try_ to put out 3.6 next week to make up for it, but no promises there.**

 **This and 3.6 were originally supposed to be a single chapter, but I ended up breaking it in two for length and time. Once that's over, we'll have one more chapter and then be back to an interlude pair.**

 **That's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!**


	21. Bud 3-6

**Bud 3.6**

Air vent above, scatter, enter, reform inside. Fog creeping inside, monster close behind, back up. Left turn, down turn, right turn, through the vent, into the hallway. _Run._

I had some space now to take stock of the situation. Any two of those hits felt strong enough to pop my Aura like a bubble, and they'd been coming faster than anything I'd ever fought save maybe Weiss under one of her haste glyphs.

I needed my weapon.

I raised a hand to my ear. "Console, Scatter. I've made contact and am currently falling back. We're dealing with a pair of capes; the first one is male, grey featureless costume, transforms into some kind of fog. Second is female, black costume, powerset unknown but with a lot of offensive power. Sound familiar?"

"...aw _hell_." That wasn't comforting. "They're called Night and Fog, a Breaker Nine and a Changer Eight, pretty obvious which is which. Fog's power is pretty obvious, worth noting that his Breaker state is both toxic and acidic. Night turns into a high-powered Brute and Mover whenever you can't see her with your own two eyes. They've been in Boston for years, though, and we never expected them to pull something like this. I'm running it to Intel as we speak. What do you think your odds are on fighting these two if it came down to it?"

"Not good, Console," I responded. "I'd have better odds if I was armed, but I'm not totally sure even then."

There was a pause on the line. "Armed. Your weapon, do you know where it is?"

"Armsmaster's lab. Can I access it, or will I need his permission?"

"One moment, patching in Armsmaster and the Director."

By the sound of things, those two had given up their pursuit and were back to breaking into the cells. I was safe, for the moment anyway. Those two didn't seem to be able to move with any amount of stealth here, at any rate. For lack of a better option, I started looking for a path to Armsmaster's lab on the north side of the fifth floor.

It was less than a minute later when Armsmaster spoke into my earpiece. "Scatter, Armsmaster. Why do you need lab access?"

I thought I picked up a vaguely accusatory tone in his voice, but now wasn't the time to question it. "The intruders are working on busting out the twins. I'm going to have any chance of stopping the four of them, I'll need my weapon."

"Have you finished the modifications we required?"

Ugh, the modifications. "Not quite, but-"

"Then the answer is no. Fall back if you need to, work on evacuating the Wards if you need to. Backup will be there momentarily."

I was about to argue when the Director cut in, and there was a tightness in her voice that I'd never heard before. "Belay that, Scatter. Your modifications are for the public eye, and that shouldn't be an issue inside the Rig. Armsmaster, what _exactly_ do you think it will look like when the PRT, Protectorate, _and_ the Wards are seen by the news chopper that's still in the air leaving the symbol of our defense to a quartet of supervillains? Give Scatter her weapon."

Armsmaster's silence over the next few seconds said more than any sentence I'd ever heard. "...Yes, Ma'am. Scatter, I'm setting the lab to unlock for you. Your weapon is in the third locker to the left of the door - do _not_ touch anything else."

Right. He wasn't happy about this, but I got the impression that his surprise at Piggot was overriding it somewhat. I wasn't about to argue, at any rate. "Yes, Sir. I'm on my way."

I'd spent enough time in Armsmaster's lab over the last two weeks that I had a decent idea of where it was in relation to everything else, so it wasn't _that_ hard to track down based on where I was relative to the training cube. Or my room, on the floor above the lab. One wrong turn and a half-dozen right ones later, I found myself at the right door.

Like Armsmaster had promised, it slid open as I approached. Crescent Rose was right where he'd said she would be, though I took a brief second to make sure she was still working at her best. She'd never failed me in a fight before, but I'd seen friends learn the hard way that there were no guarantees when it came to this.

Satisfied that there wouldn't be any problems with her normal operation, I turned my attention to the new features. I'd been procrastinating on actually swapping out the blade, which I was thankful for now. Somehow, I doubted that the blunt taser mode would faze Night and Fog much. Or Fenja and Menja, for that matter. Still though, the blade was as sharp as ever, and crackling with enough electricity to zap a small bear into submission. I could find a use for it, I was sure.

So, now it was time for a plan. The twins weren't the big threat here - their Semblances would be limited in the comparatively small hallways, and they were unarmed to boot. Night and Fog were a lot more dangerous though. I'd only gotten a general idea of the PRT's threat system - though I could already see its usefulness, and I'd be bringing it back with me to use on Remnant once I got the chance - but it seemed like a bad idea to send a Seven to fight an Eight and a Nine. I could do it, probably, but I'd need to be smart about it.

A plan started forming as I left the lab and heard the lock click behind me. I had to find them first, though. I stepped directly under one of the air vents, collapsed Crescent Rose to her smallest mode, and scattered upward. The vent was a little tight for me to comfortably fit inside without scattering, but once I got a grip on the grate to hold myself up to it, feet braced against the wall and ceiling and an ear to the grate itself, I was able to close my eyes and _listen_.

The thunder was making things difficult, but not impossible. Echoing through all the base's vents, I could hear a tearing, scraping noise that had to be the monster moving through the base. The echoes made it hard to place, but it sounded like it was coming from… below me, moving back down toward the ocean. Was their plan to just have Fenja and Menja swim away? Sure, they could move pretty quick, but it still didn't really seem feasible.

Whatever. I'd deal with that when I came to it. For now, time to give chase. I scattered through the grate, then got moving toward the base of the structure. I figured if I could get ahead of them, the surprise might be an extra advantage.

The vents weren't nearly as complex to navigate as the hallways were, funnily enough. I might have to start using these more often. By the time the scraping had moved back down to the third floor, I'd made it down to the training cube and simply fallen back to floor two. By the sound of things, they… were going through the walls again? The twins couldn't shrink, right? It was hardly impossible for someone human-sized to follow that path - I had managed, after all - but it wouldn't have been easy for them. How were they fitting in there? Were they taking a different route? If so…

"Console, Scatter. Am I wrong, or have the twins split off? Can you spot them on cameras?"

"You'd be right, we were just about to call you. The twins are moving toward the top floor, Jenkins' men are moving to intercept and fortify. We're not sure about Night and Fog, but the last time we had a camera go out it was-"

"They're not exactly quiet, I know where they are. I'm on my way," I interrupted, scattering the instant I finished talking and rushing the vent. Eight seconds later, I was on them, approaching from further down the pipe they were in the middle of tearing out.

I materialized the butt-end of Crescent Rose in the middle of the vent and shoved the speartip into the cloud at random. I felt an impact, drew back, and thrust forward again, then once more. By the time I drew back for the fourth hit, I felt the same stabbing sensation in my aura of a half-dozen attacks incoming in the span of around a quarter-second and fell back, shoving myself back fifteen feet and out the grate at the end before tentatively reforming in the hallway. I'd need room to maneuver if I was gonna pull this off.

I heard the beginning of a rumble of thunder that was cut off by the sound of tearing metal as Night ripped through the wall, tumbling through in human form with Fog trailing behind her. In another instant, she was shrouded and the pair were rushing me again.

I threw myself backward, half-scattering to help push myself further, raised Crescent Rose and snapped off a trio of Dust rounds into the cloud. I didn't see a flash from behind the cloud, so I was definitely hitting something inside the cloud. It didn't seem to faze her much, but then I wasn't really expecting it to.

The third shot was different. I landed, having built up a lead of maybe thirty feet, planted Crescent Rose into the floorboards, and scattered for just long enough to move a single Dust round from the spare magazine at my hip to the firing chamber. I saturated the very tip of the barrel with Aura, pulled the trigger, and watched a green flash herald the appearance of a swirling cone of wind wider than I was tall.

I wasn't able to see much in terms of their reaction, but the wind did exactly what I was hoping it would. Fog was pushed back almost to the end of the hall before he must've realized what had happened, and Night was left standing in the breeze, about to fall in the wind but reflexively trying to keep her balance. I cocked my scythe once more and shot her in the chest with a low-caliber Fire round before rushing forward to try and finish her off.

Night had other plans, though. She'd been blown backward off her feet, but she'd also somehow managed to get a grip on something under her cloak in the moments before I'd fired. The flashbang caught me completely off-guard, and by the time I managed to blink away the flash behind my eyes she was back on her feet, the scorched bullet wound gone and in the process of throwing her cloak over my head.

What had happened there? She didn't have regeneration or anything, did she? Maybe the monster did, but her human body-

Oh. She healed when snapping between forms, didn't she? That was gonna make this… hard.

The cloak's inside was lined with barbed hooks. They skidded off my Aura for the most part, but a handful caught on my own cloak and kept me from just yanking it off. The moment the cloak went on, my Aura started _pounding_ in warning and I scattered out from underneath it just in time to avoid the strikes that came through the space I'd been standing.

She was smart about her using power's limits. I reformed to find myself facing her once again, as she held her cloak out in front of her such that just her eyes were left looking over the top. If I shot her again, she could raise the cloak and be healed in an instant, and then she'd be on me. Behind her, Fog figuratively pulled himself together and started moving back our way. I had seconds at most before she was shrouded again.

I rushed her before that could happen. I ran toward her, not scattering so I could keep my eyes on her, Crescent Rose collapsing in my grip into a form more suited for the close-quarters of the hallways. The blade straightened, folded out to full extension, then slid down the barrel as the speartip on the opposite end collapsed and retracted into a more convenient grip. It was a five-foot broadsword that I swung at Night's centerline when I reached her a half-second later.

She managed to raise the cloak before I could reach her, but I managed to slice it in two with the attack meant for her, leaving her off-balance when she transformed back behind it. That didn't stop her from dropping the smoke grenade she'd pulled out from behind her cloak during our brief standoff, and she jumped back into Fog to avoid any serious wound on my follow-up swing.

The instant she vanished from my sight, I heard the scraping of Night running deeper inside her partner's cloud. Shooting wouldn't have accomplished much of anything at that point, so I started walking carefully backward while considering my next move. They'd be wise to the Wind Dust strategy this time, but I didn't have a whole lot of other ideas.

I missed my team. If they'd been here, Weiss could have locked these two down in seconds, leaving the rest of us to take down Night. Blake could totally have figured out a way to keep Fog out of his form for long enough to knock him out as well. Then Yang would probably crack some dumb joke involving Night going to sleep, and we'd all-

My Aura _screamed_ , and I instinctively scattered around the flurry of spiked legs that blew through me. Where in the world had that come from? I had better control than that. _Focus_ , Ruby, you can mope later if you really need to.

I half-felt it before I reformed, but the momentary distraction was enough to keep me from really noticing anything out of the ordinary. When I came back to human form, I was blind, deaf, and I choked on my first breath. All I could see was grey, and I felt the air stirring as something massive moved behind me before my Aura flared in warning once again.

I'd found myself _inside_ Fog. More importantly, he apparently couldn't seriously hurt me when I was scattered. Night still could if she landed a hit - I couldn't see her while I was scattered, and if she got me, then I'd probably be done for - but if I could avoid her for long enough to pull something...

I thought to my mental map of the Rig's exterior, figured out exactly where I was, and scattered away from the incoming attacks with a new plan in mind. Fog couldn't directly hurt me, but apparently he was strong enough to _very slowly_ whittle my Aura down. It'd take him forever to break through it, but while he was trying it was enough to tell me that I was inside his cloud. That would be important in a few minutes, but for the moment, I had to get them into position.

I ran, scattering out of the cloud before shifting back to human form so I wouldn't get too far ahead of them. I fired off another trio of rounds into the cloud, including another Wind shot to keep them guessing, and made sure that they were moving to chase me before rounding the corner.

Had to get to one of the exterior walls. A higher floor would be better, but I doubted they'd let me lead them that far out of their way. They were trying to get out of here, after all.

The closest side was the north wall, but the maze of hallways threw me off. Even with Night and Fog following as fast as they could and my continuing to pepper them with Dust rounds, it took a good two minutes before I got anywhere that would work, but the place I found was perfect. A pretty big office with a view of the city, on the west side of the Rig with enough room to move around and swing my scythe as long as I was careful. I entered, heaved the desk and a couple of chairs to one side, spun around toward the door and waited.

The clattering scraping got closer. A flash of lightning and crack of thunder struck the outside of the forcefield, and I caught a slight flicker of light in the next instant as the shield compensated for the excess energy. The _whump-whump-whump_ of the 'chopper' hovering just outside the dome, slowly orbiting and looking for any action.

Well, I'd sure be giving them some action. Maybe not the kind of thing they should be sharing on a public broadcast, but hopefully they were smart enough to put it on a delay.

Fog crept around the door a fraction of a second before I heard the sound of Night ripping through the wall to reach me. She wasn't wasting any time, and I wasn't either. I scattered forward as sight and sound became a distant memory and shot forward the instant she got inside. I felt a weak fizzing, popping sensation in my Aura as I entered Fog's radius and reformed Crescent Rose's double-blade mid-swing.

From the feel of it, Fog was fighting me. The first attack was slowed by some impressive air resistance and barely grazed her, but she was in mid-lunge when I made it. I shoved myself out of the way of her strikes, but it was a close thing. I felt a light tearing where my Aura barely caught the edge of what I guessed was one of her limb-blades, but I was behind her and shoving a spearhead into what I assumed was her centerline before she had fully registered I was moving.

I missed that attack too, which wasn't too surprising since I was operating in effective sensory deprivation and relying on vibrations and memory to tell where she was. Based on how far I'd moved, the destroyed wall was just behind me, which meant there was likely debris that could interfere with any attacks I made from right here.

I got more warnings from my Aura, and scattered around the incoming blows once more. Step two of this plan was riskier. Before Night could draw back, I closed the gaps I'd formed around her limbs with enough force to keep her momentarily pinned. Once she figured out what was going on it would be easy to rip my Aura to pieces, but I hopefully wouldn't be giving her enough time to think about it. I simultaneously reformed all three major components of Crescent Rose into two separate pieces; the railgun and spear shaft oriented straight through me and aimed at Night's body while the electrified blade swept into her side as hard as I could push it without reforming anything.

The railgun fired behind me, the round slamming into the hallway bulkhead behind me and throwing the spearhead forward. I felt resistance as it skidded off her skin before catching what felt like a joint and penetrating, as the scythe blade slammed into her directly above that point. The resistance ended, the limb was separated, and I scattered both parts of Crescent Rose before they could continue past the bounds of my Aura. One limb gone, thirteen to go. As long as I could keep her from transforming again, I could pull this off.

Three incoming attacks, at the exact moment my scythe dematerialized. I rematerialized and spun it around where my body would have been, had it not been made up of a loose cloud of rose petals at the time. It built up speed and slammed into two of the incoming limbs as I allowed the third to pass through me. The first impact was stopped as the limb severed, and the second limb was deflected as I curved the blade around and cut the third off at the midpoint.

She was recoiling now, most likely. No attacks were incoming, and I'd guess that there wouldn't be for a few seconds at least. I went on the offensive instead, firing a trio of explosive Fire Dust rounds in the direction I'd last seen her in before lunging forward and… missing entirely. Where had she gone? I couldn't feel the vibrations of her movement anymore, so she couldn't be running, unless...

The pressure I'd been feeling this whole time was gone. I was out of Fog's radius, so unless they were running away… crap.

I reformed as fast as I could with Crescent Rose in rifle mode and scanning the room with my eyes from the moment I could use them again and _there he is fire_.

Fog, having shifted back to human form in order to look at his partner and let her reform, lost the left side of his chest and got blasted against the wall from the Dust round that I sent at him before I was even fully reformed. His limbs briefly turned smoky as he tried to force himself into his fog form, but the mist dissipated as he collapsed.

I heard a _tink_ of a metal pin hitting the floor, and turned just in time to see Night's flashbang sailing toward my head before it went off. I scattered again, aware that I was once again dealing with the full complement of Night's limbs, and started cutting into her.

One second passed, then two. Even as fast as I was, I missed as many hits as I landed. She caught me once as well, twin lines of fire tracing across my Aura in an instant, and that was when I felt it. The floor was shaking, just barely enough to notice, but in a pattern that I recognized.

I reformed, jumping over the attack I knew was coming eyes still blinded from the flashbang for the moment, but able to hear as the light damage to my ears was regenerated. Just outside the dome, as close to this window as was safe, I heard a rapid _whump-whump-whump-whump._

Night was still in monster mode, but why? I rolled, waiting for my eyes to come back as I dodged another quartet of strikes. If they were there, they had to have seen us, right? I scattered around a flurry that seemed to come from three directions at once, reforming ten feet toward the window.

It hit me just as I started to see more than a bright blur. The hadn't seen us, they'd seen the flashes of light. The window was tinted, you couldn't see in from the outside, but they'd heard the gunfire and explosions timed with flashes of light from the window and put two and two together.

Well, there was a simple solution to that. Night rushed me from behind, and I scattered behind her, reforming in midair with my rifle aimed back where I'd come from. I fired two shots - the first to the left half of the window, the second to the right, both of them exploding into rocks the size of my head in the middle of their flight. The rounds impacted, the window shattered, and I almost got re-blinded by the spotlight that came through in that instant.

I could see Night, though, silhouetted against the light ahead of me, and I rushed her before she had a chance to react. Crescent Rose whirling around me, crackling unfamiliarly with Armsmaster's tech, I slammed the blunt end into Night just as she whirled around to face me. She was shoved backward with enough force to shatter a Deathstalker's armor, and practically flew out the window. I rushed to the edge to watch her fall, but it wasn't necessary. The news crew was following her descent with their eyes and the spotlight, and she smacked into the water below before bobbing back up to the surface.

I gave the chopper a wave, then turned back. I checked to make sure that Fog was dead - he was - and raised my hand to my earpiece. "Director, Scatter. Night and Fog ar-"

"Yes, I can see that. That chopper is reporting live, the entire city just heard what you did."

She sounded upset, which I guess made sense. "Sorry Ma'am, but they're no longer a threat. Where do you need me now?"

She didn't respond for a minute. I spoke up again; "Ma'am?"

"...We'll discuss this later," Piggot said. That was...ominous. "For now, get back inside the Rig and stay there. The Wards and PRT have the Twins pinned, Challenger is back on his feet and he and Armsmaster on their way."

"Is there anything back out in the city I can help with? Things sounded pretty bad out there."

" _No_ , Scatter. Things have cooled down, and we've caught several of the Empire's capes. Protectorate debriefing is scheduled for twelve-thirty unless something else comes up. Rest up, you're done for the night. We _will_ be having a conversation about your actions."

* * *

 **And we're done. I've been looking forward to that final scene for _months_.**

 **One chapter to go, and then an interlude pair to wrap up the arc. Don't have much else to say here though, so see y'all next time!**


	22. Bud 3-7

**Bud 3.7**

"People, I need to know what the hell happened tonight."

We were gathered around a big conference table in the PRTHQ. The entire Protectorate, Triumph, several PRT section heads, Director Piggot, Deputy Director Renick, and a woman I half-recognized as a member of New Wave were all there, running the spectrum from angry to tired to depressed. The amount of negativity in the room was almost stifling. Challenger had apparently been healed by one of the New Wave crew, as had a handful of others, but this 'Panacea' apparently couldn't save everyone.

Renick was the first to speak up. "At our current count, we have fourteen dead and three injured PRT agents, fifty-five dead and seventy-two injured civilians." _What?_ How had I not heard about that!? "Hero casualties were minimal, obviously, and the damage to the Rig alone is looking to be somewhere in the vicinity of a one-point-five million dollars. In exchange, the Empire lost strength - thirteen unpowered gang members were arrested and five were killed by police forces or rival gangs, in addition to the capture of Alabaster, Jotun, and Crusader, the recapture of Fenja and Menja, and the deaths of Night and Fog."

Half the room glanced toward me as he finished, then quickly looked away. The New Wave woman, Photon something if I remembered right, watched me warily. What did she think, that I was gonna be doing this often?

Piggot nodded. "Right. Be under no illusions, people, we lost this fight. Even if they have lost over a third of their capes, the fact that they managed something like this under our noses is going to shatter public perception for a while." She looked to her left. "Lynch, how are we going to handle this?"

I hadn't even noticed Shane sitting over there. He normally dressed much nicer than this, and he didn't look totally rested. It was after midnight, how much rest had he gotten? "We'll be fine in the long run. This isn't the first time we've had a scenario like this. We all remember when Lung first came to town." A collective wince went around the room. Who was Lung, again? "We'll play up the villain captures, focus on the places where we succeeded most heavily. If we can keep them in prison, all the better. Crusader is…" He spoke through his yawn, "on his third strike, yes?"

"Only his second, unfortunately," Renick said. "We'll leave containing them for the end of this meeting. Let's start from the beginning. Collins, unless I'm mistaken, the Empire only had eleven capes last week, not counting Fenja and Menja. They attacked tonight with fourteen, and that's with neither Kaiser not Krieg making appearances. Where did they find the extra firepower?"

A man I hadn't met before, seated two spots to Shane's left, responded. "Four of the five new faces are ones we've seen before. Purity, Crusader, Night, and Fog were all part of the Empire two years ago, then split up. To our knowledge, they were part of their own internal faction within the Empire before they split off for unknown reasons. Purity stayed in Brockton, claiming to be a hero, the others remained villains and moved to Boston and New York. We currently don't know why the three of them returned, but we've reserved Think Tank time for the problem and I'll keep you in the loop. As for the telekinetic that attacked New Wave, I believe Lady Photon can tell us something."

Ahh, that was her name. She was the only cape I'd met here who wasn't wearing a mask, and I wasn't quite sure why. She was one of the people who was fighting Purity, if I remembered right. "The girl called herself Rune. She was a powerful Shaker who wore robes in black and red. She was capable of telekinetically throwing around chunks of pavement the size of trucks without much apparent difficulty, but she only had three, no more than two of which were usually moving at any given time. Our guess is that she's limited in the number of objects she can move, as well as in selecting new objects, though we're not sure on details beyond that."

She gave the report professionally, like she'd done much like it a thousand times before. Renick said, "Even if she's limited to two at a time, that gives the Empire a lot more mobility than they've ever had before. You implied she was fairly young?"

"Yes," Lady Photon replied. "Between her height and voice, she couldn't have been a day over fifteen."

"Right. We'll keep an eye on her, see if we can't take her in and rebrand into the Wards," Piggot said. Nobody batted an eye at that. How common of an occurrence was this? "Now, unless anyone else has anything to add, we'll move on to the next question."

"Erika Herren." The entire table turned to look at another man, quiet so far, sitting to Collins' right. "Age thirteen, almost fourteen, triggered in juvenile detention in central Pennsylvania two months ago and broke out immediately afterword. Displayed a telekinetic power that allowed her to rip the walls off of her cell and ride them away from the prison before anyone knew what was happening. Has not been seen since. Five-foot-one, blonde hair, sound familiar?"

Woah, that was fast. I guess the prison records helped, but how had he managed that so quickly? Lady Photon nodded as Piggot replied, "Good, we can use that. We'll collect what we know about her power, costume, and personality later and send out a memo with identity details redacted. Next item of importance - where were Kaiser and Kreig during this mess? We received no reports of appearances from either of them all night, unless something has changed, there."

Collins spoke up again. "We don't have anything concrete, only theories. We had no idea that Night and Fog were back in town and the fact that they came back on such short notice is very strange if Kaiser wasn't going to show up himself. Why call in out-of-town firepower if you're not planning on showing up yourself? Our running theory is that he wasn't the one to bring them over here."

"What are we looking at, then?" Piggot asked. "A coup within the Empire?"

"No, we don't think so. Like I said before, we've known that the Empire had internal factions for years, and we know roughly who fit into each one. With the possible exception of Hookwolf, none of those factions really stood to gain anything from this except for Kaiser's own.

Collins' partner spoke up again. "Plus, even if somebody did wrest control from Kaiser, one would think that they would be talking about it. Hookwolf in particular isn't exactly the most… subtle of villains, as was amply demonstrated tonight. We haven't finished counting the bodies on Lord's street, and that's without even touching the casualties among the ABB once they made it there."

I started at that. "They made it that far? I thought they were going to retreat once I did. What happened?"

Piggot and Renick exchanged glances; Piggot's unreadable, and Renick's vaguely uncomfortable. The latter was the one to respond. "We were mistaken in our assumption. As far as we know, once you left, they pulled themselves back together and continued on their way. While you were fighting Night and Fog, Lung engaged Hookwolf and pushed the trio back out of their territory."

No. No way, they said it'd be fine. "How many civilians died after I left?"

Renick was slow to respond, so Piggot took over. "It doesn't matter. If you hadn't retreated, then Night, Fog, Fenja, and Menja would all be free, the Rig would have suffered even greater damage than it already did, and-"

"I don't care," I interrupted. "How many people died because I ran-"

"And we would almost certainly have lost _three_ of our Wards!" Piggot finished, talking over me with practiced ease. "Aegis was severely injured as it is. We contained the damage as well as we could, given the circumstances." She looked to the rest of the table in turn. "Remember that. We are not omnipotent. We are not capable of stopping every death in the city." She turned back, looked me in the eyes, and said, "We do all that we can, but we don't blame ourselves for failing to stop the inevitable."

There were a few moments of silence after that. I didn't really know how to respond, and neither did anyone else. I… wasn't sure After a minute, the Director spoke up again. "Now. We've covered the lead-in and a possible motive, albeit with some problems. Now for the attack itself. Do we have a progression of events?"

Collins responded this time. "At twenty-two-thirty-one hours, Purity took flight from her usual location, in the general vicinity of the Towers. She made a run directly for the Rig bridge and took it down in her first shot, then ran before anyone could react. She stayed in the air for long enough for New Wave to engage her, then kept their attention for as long as she could before falling back. Within a minute of her initial appearance, Crusader's ghosts emerged from the ground surrounding the Rock street police station, Gleipnir and Munin attack smaller stations, Hookwolf's trio begins making a run for ABB territory, and Alabaster attempts to break into a hospital. When New Wave begins their chase, Jotun, Othala, Victor, and Rune ride one of Rune's rocks into their neighborhood and start making a mess. The police station and hospital attacks were over by twenty-two-thirty-five, with two captures and two escapes. Hookwolf's trio encountered Lung at twenty-two-forty-three and was beaten back with severe burns by twenty-three hundred hours. New Wave's ground fighters encountered the Empire's capes at twenty-two-thirty-five, and were being forced out of the area by Rune until the appearance of Shadow Stalker."

"Wait, what?" Triumph interrupted, mirroring my own thoughts. "Why didn't I know about this? How did she get out there?"

Lady Photon spoke up. "Stalker told Brandish that she was simply 'in the area.' I would imagine that she was on yet another solo patrol." She looked the Director in the eyes as she said it.

Piggot sighed slightly. "Shadow Stalker is over the age at which we allow Wards to patrol solo. She told us roughly where she would be, so this doesn't violate her probation." Probation? I hadn't heard about this. "We'll give her another safety reminder, but frankly we can't afford to take her off the streets for something this comparatively minor. She did not inform us that she would be engaging, which is somewhat more serious, but also forgivable given the circumstances and her success."

Lady Photon was clearly angry, but she didn't say anything more. I could tell that was a conversation they'd had before.

Piggot continued, "For those unaware, Shadow Stalker arrived at the scene of the fight several minutes after it started and landed a shot on Rune with a tranquilizer arrow. Jotun was captured in the resulting confusion, while the other three escaped."

Huh. Shadow Stalker was apparently pretty competent. She'd been the best fighter among the Wards before I got here, from what I could tell, but she was offputting in a way I couldn't really define. If I could figure out what her deal was and maybe help her out, then she could be really helpful. Especially if her power was as similar to mine as I suspected.

"Now. Miss Militia, Dauntless, if you could give us an explanation of what happened during your engagements?"

Their explanations were fairly straightforward. Munin was some kind of 'Combat Thinker,' and apparently a relatively strong one with some odd, poorly-understood limits. He'd done some damage, then escaped as soon as Dauntless showed up. Gleipnir was a lot simpler. He was strong and tough, and could fly to boot, with the quirk that people he punched grew slower and weaker the harder he hit them. Miss Militia had basically hard-countered him, and he'd been driven off easily. Then it was mine and Challenger's turn.

"Now for Crusader's attack. Note that this was the only attack on a station with major casualties, with eight officers injured and three in critical condition. From what we understand, this occurred in the opening wave, and Scatter's appearance drew the majority of the remaining ghosts out of the building. Scatter?"

I gave my own explanation then, followed by Challenger giving his side of the story. They were surprised at Crusader's ghost's ability to simply phase through my Aura; apparently, Challenger and I were exceptions to the rule when it came to that. Lady Photon confirmed that her forcefields could keep them contained, which was a little weird.

"Shouldn't all forcefields be pretty similar? They are on-" I cut myself off, remembering that there were people here that didn't know about Remnant. "They all do pretty much the same thing, right?"

"Not really, Scatter," said another man that I vaguely recognized but couldn't quite place. "Without taking us too far off-topic, even very similar powers tend to work in different ways, at least as far as we can tell. It's one of the mysteries of parahuman science."

"Back to the original point," Piggot said, "You said he landed a hit on you, correct? You seem to be fine now."

"It wasn't my first time fighting while injured, and I healed it pretty quickly anyway. It wasn't that bad of a hit."

"Nonetheless, the fact that he only landed one is… somewhat unbelievable. Would you care to explain exactly how you managed that?"

What was she looking for, here? "I pulled the same trick that I used against Night and Fog later. I can keep myself scattered for a really long time if I need to, and the only cost is going blind and deaf while I'm doing it. That's not a problem with my Aura, so I just reform whatever I'm attacking with, make the hit, then scatter it again once the hit is over."

The same man who'd talked about forcefields earlier spoke up then. "We learned that this was possible during power testing, and it was part of why I recommended a higher classification number during my initial report." Oh, he was the guy in charge of the intensive power testing I'd gone through a few weeks ago. I mentally facepalmed when I made the connection.

"We'll consider it, but that's far from a priority right now," said the Director. "Now, let's run down the events that took place on the PHQ. Collins?"

"From what we know, at twenty-two-thirty-seven hours, Night and Fog reach the base of the Rig and start climbing their way up. It was a foggy night over the Bay, so they likely used that to cover their entrance. We didn't know they were here until cameras started going dead at twenty-two-forty hours. They knew exactly where they were going - how they knew this is a serious question, by the way - and managed to avoid any hallways until they were forced to emerge when a trooper on the lowest level heard them scraping around. Fog eliminated the camera, then Night presumably moved in to kill him." His delivery had been professional for the most part, but here Collins paused for a moment. "They… didn't leave any bodies, I'm afraid. We're not sure what exactly became of them."

Several people in the room winced, but I was impressed at the level of control. There was sadness, of course, but considering that some of the people here had probably lost friends and teammates, there wasn't nearly as much as I might have expected.

"At twenty-three hundred hours, Scatter made her way to the Rig. Twenty-three-fourteen, she makes first contact with Night and Fog. Twenty-three-seventeen, Scatter enters Armsmaster's lab and retrieves her weapon while Night and Fog begin moving back down toward the water level and Fenja and Menja begin moving toward the roof level. Twenty-"

"Wait," Piggot interrupted. "Scatter, just to make this clear. Now that it's been seen on the news, there isn't much point in hiding your weapon. Doing so would raise more questions, at this rate. You're still going to need to blunt it before patrolling with it and run it through the typical Tinkertech safety inspections, but once that's done I'll let you carry it somewhat more openly. Is that understood?"

I...what? I thought she was mad at me for what I'd done. Not that I was gonna complain. No looking gift horses in the mouth, at least not while the previous owner was still standing there. I was still cautious as I responded, though. "Yes, ma'am."

Piggot nodded, apparently satisfied. "Alright, moving along. What's next?"

Collins' partner - I really needed to figure out his name at some point - responded, "Focusing on Night and Fog first. Twenty-three-eighteen, Scatter engages the pair again. After several seconds, the fight begins moving, Scatter falling back and Night and Fog chasing. Twenty-three-twenty-one, Scatter enters room 217, a spare office that was unassigned to anyone at the time. After Scatter… prepared the room for the fight, camera footage ends and the first information we have afterword comes from the news helicopter at twenty-three-twenty-three. We had hopes that Scatter herself could provide some context?"

That was a lot of people suddenly staring at me. "Um. Okay. I'd realized that when I was… when I'm in my Breaker state, Fog couldn't hurt me but I was blind to Night. When Night and Fog burst through the door, I scattered and stayed that way while fighting. Night could hurt me, but I managed to dodge for long enough that she was threatened. Fog reformed, not knowing that I could tell that he'd done so, and I reformed and shot him when he looked at Night so that she'd heal. Night dropped a flashbang grenade, which I assume is what attracted the chopper, and I was blind for as long as it took to come up with the 'kicking her out the window' idea."

Piggot nodded. "That's the next thing that we'll need to discuss. I understand why you killed them. We've had issues containing them in the past, and the situation warranted it." I noticed Lady Photon and a few others being a little uncomfortable at that, but nobody said anything. "What I'd like to know is why you did it _on live TV_."

Wait, that was the problem? I'd thought they were mad about killing them in the first place. That was a bit of a relief. "I didn't have another way of doing it. She kept pulling out things to blind me before I could actually finish her off, and every time I looked at her the damage I'd done would reset."

"So you decided that the best way to handle this was to execute the woman in front of a news camera?"

Well okay, when she put it like that… "I didn't have many other options. It was that or let the two of them escape, and I wasn't going to do that after what they pulled tonight."

Piggot was silent for a moment, and the table was watching her. "I'll grant you that," she said eventually, "but I hope you're aware of the consequences here. You have just _shattered_ the public's perception of you. Shane, what would you say is going to the public reaction to all this in the morning?"

Shane blinked blearily and yawned. "Uhh… one of a couple of things. Ideally, they just shift to seeing Scatter as a... badass who you should avoid pissing off, if you'll pardon the language. We'll need to change the branding, but it's not really the end of the world. But then it's just as likely that they look at this and see someone who needs to be reigned in and… more tightly controlled. She's new enough that, uh, either one is still a possibility."

"You see the problem," the Director said. "This isn't unsalvageable, but you are going to have to be clean of any future scandals. Until further notice, we'll be keeping you out of the public eye, excepting patrols with senior Protectorate members and pre-planned PR demonstrations with limited interaction."

That… really didn't seem like a punishment. Maybe I'd gotten popular among the citizenry here somehow, but I didn't want the attention anyway. I wasn't about to complain, but was that honestly the worst they were throwing at me over this? Why?

I kept my surprise under control, just in case. "Yes, Ma'am."

Piggot nodded, watching me carefully. Yeah, there was definitely something else going on there, but I wasn't sure what. She'd been really mad at me before, hadn't she? "Moving on, what about Fenja and Menja's recapture?"

Collins' partner responded. "As mentioned before, at twenty-three-seventeen, the twins are freed from confinement and begin moving up to the top of the Rig. Their exact goals are currently unclear, but it may be that they intended to damage the missile defense systems and allow Purity to take down the shield and release them to the outside world. At any rate, Captain Jenkins' squad, alongside Aegis, Triumph, and Vista had already begun fortifying the roof access, and the twins encountered them while still indoors. Jenkins, I believe you wanted to comment on this?"

A PRT officer near the opposite side of the room from me stood. I'd spoken to the captain over the radio earlier that night, but his accent came through somewhat stronger in person. "Our 'fortifications' were made up of a couple canisters worth of foam and what Vista could do with the space she had. The twins couldn't reach their full height, but that still wouldnta' even slowed them down normally. Triumph and Aegis slowed them down where they could, but really, Vista's the only reason they're contained instead of escaped or dead. And I mean _Vista_ , not her power."

I wasn't the only one a little surprised at that. Several people made to ask questions at once, but the Director called everyone back to order. "Jenkins, if you would explain?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Intel, we've got the security footage, right? See for yourself."

I had to spin my chair around to see the video playing on a wall-mounted screen. As the video started, I found myself idly wondering why there weren't more screens at different points in the room, but that faded as I watched the scene.

Vista had clearly been at work. She hadn't been able to expand the hallway without the twins taking advantage, but she'd managed to fill it with barriers and tripwires anyway, while still stretching it out in terms of distance. It was pretty impressive, all told, but Jenkins was right about it not stopping the twins. They came charging around the corner, nine feet tall and running at a solid twenty miles an hour, and smashed through Vista's defenses in seconds. The recording had no audio, but I saw the impact of one of Triumph's shouts slowing them down, followed by Aegis moving in to grapple before getting knocked through the floor for his trouble.

Then Vista herself made an appearance, running forward after Aegis. Some PRT soldier tried to jump after her and pull her to safety, but she warped space and got ahead of him too quickly to react. Whichever twin was in front went to backhand her back down the hallway, only to swat the barrier that appeared where Vista had been standing. Vista herself was now standing behind the woman, having whirled around her leg as fast as I'd ever seen the girl move, and was swinging a combat knife like a baseball bat into the giant's back leg.

Mid-swing, the knife expanded from dagger-size to shortsword-size, and scored a small line in the twin's thigh as she jumped away. I decided to call that one Fenja, not because I knew which was which, but to make keeping track of them easier. Vista jumped back to avoid the follow up attack, rolling backward in the first move she'd picked up while sparring against me, then sprung forward off a newly-formed pillar as her knife stretched out to a full broadsword.

Her next swing shattered the blade like glass - she'd spread the material too thin, and it couldn't take the force of the swing. The shrapnel sprayed out, and Vista had to jump back behind one of the barriers that she'd already made to avoid the giant's counter. Triumph fired another series of shots, and that was enough to draw the pair's attention back toward the other defenders. The PRT troopers opened up as well, firing at arms and legs to avoid killing them, but they stopped at some unseen signal. Vista rushed out again, covering the distance in a pair of space-lengthened steps, and jump-kicked Menja in the back of the knee. It wouldn't have done much except for the complementary walls she'd erected in just the right places to keep her target from rolling with the attack.

Menja toppled, and Vista jumped on top of her. A full force jump directly into the back of Menja's head put her down for the moment, and Vista ducked under a jab from Menja before jumping backward and raising a wall to stop the follow-up. As Menja recoiled from punching the wall, more bullets tore through the already-injured hand and she started falling back.

The hallway walls pinched together at the far end of the hallway, and Menja spun around to find Vista on her again, with another knife in hand being drawn out to sword-length once more. She'd taken it from one of the PRT troopers, who had willingly given it up when she asked. It was hard to tell, but with how much slower she was taking it this time I got the impression that she was taking more care with this one than she had the previous. She held it in front of her as she ran forward and shoved it as far into Menja's thigh as she could.

If the twins had been at full size, then that wound would have been barely an inch deep. As it was, with the twins unable to grow beyond ten feet or so, even as the sword shrank the tip of the sword punched out of the back of the woman's leg. She went down after that, and the video ended as PRT troopers began moving forward with containment foam guns.

That was a seriously impressive showing, given Vista's experience. It was one thing to know that she was pretty good at this from our training sessions, but it was always a toss-up how well that translated to a life-or-death situation.

Jenkins spoke up in the silence that followed the video. "I don't quite know where Vista learned to do that, but the girl deserves a medal for it."

I was about to respond when a glare from the Director shut me down. Why was she… oh. Oh no. That was going to be a bigger problem than I'd expected. "We'll consider it," she said. Jenkins was about to respond, as were several others, but the director continued before he could. "What Vista accomplished is impressive, but it doesn't have much relevance to this discussion. More importantly, the Empire is now down a large amount of their firepower and it's lost face as well. Coil and the ABB are going to be taking advantage, and it's very possible that they won't be the only ones..."

The meeting continued on that topic for another few minutes, which could basically be summarized as 'things are about to get crazy,' which I could already have told them. When you throw that many competing factions into such a small area and then shake the box, things tend to get a little heated. There was some discussion of gangs from out-of-town that might move in, plus the possibility of a more successful breakout on the Empire's part, but it didn't seem likely that either would have much success for the moment.

I was one of the first people out of the room, feeling a little frustrated. The director had said she wanted to keep me out of controversy, but I hadn't realized what that really meant at first. She didn't want somebody who'd done what I had to be teaching the Wards. I guessed it made sense from her perspective, but still, come on!

My fuming was cut short when I caught the sound of somebody following behind me. I wasn't the only one headed for the exit, but I'd taken a more roundabout path to cool off a little before heading outside and the footsteps stood out once I'd gotten deep enough into the building. There weren't that many people moving around this late at night. I listened to the steps for a second, heard the weight behind them, and waited for them to arrive once I figured out who they belonged to.

Triumph rounded the corner a few moments later, caught off-guard when he saw me waiting. "Scatter! Uh, hi. I'm… not bothering you, am I?"

Triumph was a little odd. He reminded me of Jaune from a few months into Beacon sometimes; like he was trying his best to lead a team despite the fact that he wasn't really prepared for it, or even really good at it. Jaune had eventually grown out of it, and his team had grown into a powerhouse, so I could see Triumph managing the same given time. "No, what do you need?"

He swallowed. "You're the reason that Vista pulled that off, right? The whole thing with Fenja and Menja? That looked a little like what you were doing to us that one time in the Cube."

Huh. "Yeah, it is. She's doing really well, like you saw. Why do you ask?"

Triumph paused for a second, like he was putting his words together in his head. "She saved lives tonight. I don't think we were in any real danger, but if the twins had gone too far then I don't think they could have been stopped nonlethally."

"Yeah, from what I know of their power I think you're probably right."

"When you first told us about your 'training,' I didn't think it would actually mean much, but I think that tonight proved that it works. Vista should have been the worst Ward in hand-to-hand, but she almost managed to take those two down and it's only been two weeks." He paused again. "I want that for the rest of the Wards."

That _was_ where he was going with that. Huh. "I don't think the Director would be too happy about me doing that at this point."

"She hasn't ordered you not to though, right?" Now _that_ caught me off-guard. I hadn't expected him to be that willing to break the spirit of the rules. "I'm in charge of the Wards unless she or Armsmaster overrules me, and I think this is too important to ignore. I don't want to suggest keeping it quiet, but… if neither of them found out about it, then it wouldn't hurt anything, would it?"

I didn't say yes immediately. I had to think about it for a minute. I really didn't want to annoy these people. They were probably my only way home, after all, and if they got mad enough to try and arrest me then I didn't feel super confident in my ability to fight my way through all of them at once. On the other hand... I'd broken the rules on way flimsier terms than this, and I was pretty sure these kids needed this help. If they were going to survive long-term in a place like this, they needed all the help they could get.

"Alright," I said. "Here's what we're going to do…"

* * *

 **Aaaaaaah. This one fought me. It fought me hard. I'm still not totally happy with it and I've been trying to fix it for an extra two weeks. It's out here now, though, so we'll see how it goes.**

 **This is the end of the arc, not counting the interludes. Actually got this done by the end of freshman year, which was a little unexpected. Summer break is starting in a couple of weeks, and my output should go up by quite a bit when that happens. I'm gonna aim to get arc four completed by the time school starts back up at the end of August, but no promises.**

 **I'll try to have the next chapter out by August 11th. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!**


	23. Bud 3-i

**Bud 3.i**

 **December 21st, 2010**

Shadow Stalker leapt into the air, shifting into her shadow-state to gain extra altitude, shifting back long enough to brace and jump off the wall in front of her, then shifting back once more until she reached the rooftop.

She stopped for a moment, listened. The city was in absolute chaos, and she was _loving_ it. It was a perfect playground for someone like her. She'd already intercepted half a dozen Empire gangsters since the attacks started, and now she'd finally found a real fight.

New Wave had some potential, but they weren't quite at the level they could have been. They held back too much, were too cautious. They'd released their identities to the world, paid the price for it, and were too scared of it happening again to take any serious risks.

Shadow Stalker - Sophia - had to admit, though, they weren't bad in a fight. From her vantage point, she could watch as Flashbang, Manpower, and Brandish advanced on the Empire capes that had apparently invaded their neighborhood. Considering the Empire's advantages right here, Sophia was honestly surprised that they were winning at all, but they weren't doing an awful job.

Manpower and Jotun were duking it out in the middle of the street, shocks of electricity and cold snaps crackling out across the street with every impact and pinching craters into anything their duel came across. It wasn't much of a fight, of course. Jotun was new, no more than a couple of months into his powers, and Manpower had been heroing for well over a decade. Even with Jotun's minor powers, it wasn't much of a contest.

Brandish was facing off with Othala and Victor. This was a lot closer of a fight. Othala looked to have granted Victor invulnerability, and it was letting him shrug off Brandish's energy blades. Othala herself was staying back to minimize the risk of getting sliced in two, but Victor was giving her a heck of a fight. Brandish was good, but he was better. Without her invincible ball form, she would have been in some serious trouble.

Flashbang, on the other hand, was having some serious problems. The girl he was fighting was strong, despite her lack of experience. She was standing on a rooftop, directing a trio of truck-sized boulders through the air and just barely holding back from squashing Flashbang like a bug. His spheres were doing a little damage to her rocks, but not nearly enough, and they were serving as effective barriers to keep him from hitting the girl directly. If that wasn't bad enough, she was moving the rocks to attack the other heroes whenever she had the chance.

Normally, Sophia might have left him to his fate, but this was a special case. She pulled out her crossbow and loaded one of her glass tranquilizer rounds. It wouldn't do for this girl to get too cocky.

Sophia fired from her shadow-state. The bolt shot forward, unaffected by the air and barely touched by gravity, phased through a rock that had begun to pass between them, and caught the red-robed girl in the chest. She staggered, took a half-step, then collapsed off the rooftop as the boulders fell from the sky.

Victor heard the boulders hit the ground and didn't waste a second in rushing over to catch the girl before she hit the ground. With their air support down, they began falling back, Victor running alongside Othala with the wizard-girl over his shoulder. Jotun moved to follow them, but Manpower intercepted him, grabbing both arms and forcing them behind his back. Sophia fired another shot into the easy target, and Jotun collapsed a second later.

* * *

 **December 23rd, 2010**

"Stalker."

"What?"

Triumph sighed. "I suppose it's too much to ask for a 'yes, sir?'"

Sophia didn't respond. The answer was going to be yes for as long as he was going to be wimpy enough to ask like that. You'd think a leader would take charge more often than this, but apparently not. The PRT liked its Wards that way.

"Right. I'm not going to bother lecturing you about patrolling alone again. If it hasn't stuck the last six times, it won't stick this time, either. The Wards are meeting for an outdoor training exercise just out-of-town this evening, on some of the Stansfield's family land. The van's leaving at six from the basement garage."

Ugh. She was planning on patrolling again tonight. Something was up with the way the Empire had acted a couple of days ago was far from their usual MO. She wasn't the only one to notice, but she was the only one that was actually doing anything about it. She'd lost enough time at school today, staying late to help Emma with her prank. "I'm busy. And we both know that whatever team-building stuff they're having us do won't accomplish anything."

"I set this up myself, actually," Triumph responded. "I think you'll be interested in what we're doing. It's on one condition though." He looked around. Checking to see if anybody was around? What was he up to? "You can't tell anybody what happens there. If anybody asks, we were doing some destructive power testing where nobody would get mad at us for breaking stuff."

Hmm. Now she was intrigued. And he'd noticed it too, damnit. "Fine, I'll come. But this had better be worth it."

"It will be, don't worry. Don't be late." As if she'd be worried about something like this.

Ninety minutes later, Sophia piled into the van at precisely 6:11 PM. Triumph shot her a dirty look but said nothing as the van pulled out. She looked around at each Ward in turn, trying to figure out what they knew about all this. They were all in full costume, which wasn't too surprising if they were going to be outside but was still unusual. The Stansfields were Gallant's family, and they already knew the Wards.

Clockblocker and Gallant were screwing around, as normal. Something about testing a 'laughter' setting on Gallant's power. Why a hero would bother with something like that when they had so many better tools at his disposal, Sophia had no idea. It made them harder to read than one might think, but she didn't think they knew what was happening.

Across the center, Triumph and Vista were talking quietly. The sound of the engine drowned any hope of listening in, but it looked like they were planning something. What could Triumph be planning that involved her of all people?

Aegis, seared to Sophia's left, was unreadable as usual. He was smarter than he looked, and at least he was less obnoxious than the two clowns up front. Kid Win, to her right, was the same, but for a different reason. He was just usually daydreaming so much that he forgot to annoy her.

Nobody spoke to her during the ride. Fine by her. She spent the ride checking over her crossbows as well as she could in the van, and then fell asleep against the back wall before waking up to the sound of the van stopping a half-hour later.

They got out, and the van pulled away. The Wards were left at the end of a gravel road, with rolling hills and woods stretching out for acres ahead of them. Night had fallen hours ago, and Kid Win and Gallant lit up portions of their costume so people could see. The sound of the van faded behind them, and they were left with the sound of the breeze and nothing else.

"So… what are we doing here?" Gallant asked.

"Well. I kind of thought she'd be here by now, actually," Triumph responded. "Everybody, keep an eye out, and I guess we'll start mov-"

"Sorry, that's a failure," said a patch of darkness that had managed to avoid everybody's attention until now. Shadow Stalker had her crossbow out in a flash, and Vista had pulled a staff from… somewhere by the time anybody else really registered what was going on. As they watched, the darkness vanished, and a human silhouette appeared in its place. "You knew I was going to be here, so you should have kept looking. You've got to trust the information you have or you might hesitate at the wrong moment."

Sophia cocked her head, now very interested. "That's what this is? Another training session? Why all the secrecy?"

"Good question. The Director wouldn't be very happy if she learned that I was doing this." Scatter paused for a second. "Do any of you have a problem with that? Or with me being the one to teach you?"

Nobody spoke up. Good. Maybe they weren't as submissive as she thought they were. Or they were just scared to speak up now that Triumph was playing along.

"Alright then. Let's go, into the woods. We'll get you started with one-on-one spars, and I've already got an arena marked off."

One on ones, huh? Not exactly what she'd been expecting, but she could roll with it. Not like any of the other Wards could really stand up to her if she really tried, anyway.

* * *

Six hours later, collapsing into her bed sometime after one in the morning and too exhausted to bother checking the actual time, Sophia realized the error in that assumption. She'd fought six matches, one against each other Ward. It had started out well enough; Clockblocker had gone down instantly, Kid Win hadn't taken much longer. Then, people had started realizing that Scatter wasn't limiting them in the same ways the PRT did. She didn't mind if people left with bruises, twisted ankles, or black eyes, so long as there wasn't any permanent damage. Sophia was usually fighting just shy of that level anyway, so she didn't have much further to go, but that wasn't true for any of the others.

Sophia had started losing a lot more, after that.

She was almost proud of them, actually. Triumph, Aegis, and even Vista had all wiped the floor with her. Aegis was effectively invincible, and just kept on coming until Sophia ran out of steam a few minutes in. The punch he'd landed had put the wind out of her for long enough that Scatter called the match before she could even move. Triumph had opened with a wide-effect shout that blasted her through the treeline before she could even react, and Vista had just run circles around her and whittled her down through sheer tenacity. Just went to show how effective even these _kids_ could be when they were off the leash.

That wasn't to say that Sophia was content to stay at that level, of course. Three wins out of six fights put her exactly at the middle of the pack, and that was the last place she wanted to be. She'd fight harder, faster, and meaner. She intended to come out on top, and prove to everyone that she still wasn't the… the _prey_ that they'd been until now.

* * *

 **January 3rd, 2011**

 _Phase through the fist, dephase long enough to kick off attacker's sternum. Backflip toward the treeline, keep out of his sight._

Shadow Stalker took the fraction of a second she was in the air to plan out her next couple of moves. She'd only recently gotten it down fast enough to satisfy Scatter, but she was all the stronger for it.

 _Stay phased, don't leave the shadow state unless needed._

If she was in her shadow state, then there wasn't much he could do to stop her, either.

She ricocheted through the treeline, moving quickly enough that Aegis could barely keep up. She'd dephase for exactly the instant required to jump off another tree, then be rephrased before she could be slowed down. He was a tricky opponent - he could take almost anything she could dish out, was fast enough to keep up with her when very few others could, and strong enough to keep her pinned without even really trying if she didn't phase. She'd given up trying to hit him with her crossbow after the first night - it accomplished about the same amount whether she missed or hit. A month ago, she'd have lost an actual fight against him nine times out of ten. She hadn't realized it when they'd started, but it hadn't taken her long to realize how much stronger Aegis actually was. Now, though, even after just a week...

Aegis crashed through a tree that she'd just phased through and ducked the branch she whipped toward him from midair. As he came up, Sophia failed to return to her shadow state and instead pulled out a baton. The trap was obvious, but he charged through anyway. Idiot. He could have dodged, why take a hit you didn't need to?

She waited until he was exactly the right distance away, then phased for long enough to throw the baton. Aegis didn't even try to dodge, and it reformed in the middle of his chest with an end poking out of his front and back.

It barely even slowed him down. Of course he could take that. Didn't change the fact that he should have dodged, but Sophia repeated the process from earlier, phasing and dephasing in order to keep away from him, coming up with another plan. She had a backup option, but she'd have preferred to keep it a secret if possible. Oh well.

Step one, find the right tree. Sophia wasn't enough of a nerd to be able to name different types of tree, but she knew that none of the ones around her were the right kind. She needed needles, not the thick branches she was jumping through now. She had time, at least for the moment, and they weren't limited in space like they might be if anybody else was training them.

This area didn't have what she needed, so she'd change the area. If Aegis thought she was running, so much the worse for him when she finally caught him. She actually wound up having to slow down at a couple of points to make sure he didn't lose her - not that it would matter here, but against anybody smart, she'd have to make sure they didn't know she was leading them anywhere.

She found what she needed, and jumped across a series of branches to the ground. The branches and needles were painful to reform through, but they were better than not slowing down at all and breaking her legs on the grass below.

Shadow Stalker turned to face Aegis as he crashed through the treeline down to her, only to jump and kick off his face at the last possible second, phasing through his attempt to grapple. She flew into the air, Aegis hot on her heels, and dephased for exactly the instant needed to grab onto a branch with one hand.

This was a trick that she'd learned about way back during her power testing but hadn't ever found a use for until now. She had a limit on how much she could take with her into her breaker state. It went up and down a little based on the day, but it usually hovered right around fifty pounds. If she tried to take more than that, then she'd only manage to actually phase part of it, and that wasn't usually helpful considering that the part she phased stayed attached to the rest of the object and weighed her down; she wasn't strong enough in her breaker state to actually move very much in the physical world.

Something like these branches, though, worked wonders. Sophia grabbed the branch, and the six feet on the end phased with her. The rest stayed attached, and her momentum swung her around, bending the branch almost to the breaking point. When she released, at exactly the right time, the branch reformed as it snapped back into position, just as Aegis flew upward through the exact same space.

He kept on his path even after it reformed, but wound up plowing into the tree trunk a second later with the branch fused to his torso. Sophia moved quickly, repeating the process again and again before he could break out, leaving him pinned in place by a dozen branches and finally slowing down from the amount of damage he'd taken.

"Alright, stop!" Scatter appeared on the ground below them in an instant, despite the fact that Sophia hadn't even seen her approaching yet.

Sophia was getting stronger as this went on, as were the rest of the Wards. Even just a week and a half of it had shown noticeable improvement in every one of them. She figured that they'd stand a fair chance against the Protectorate one-on-one if they played their cards right and fought smart. Scatter, however, was on an entirely different level. Sophia doubted that anyone else had seen it, but she knew what someone that was at the top of the ladder looked like, and the glimpse she'd gotten during their brief sparring match told her everything she needed to know.

You couldn't hit her; she saw you coming, moved too quickly to hit, and let your attack pass through her without any effort. Even if you did manage to somehow land a hit, and she hadn't let you land it to somehow gain an advantage, it would be stopped by her forcefield. Even that wouldn't be so much of a threat in anyone else's hands, but when the person with that power had trained at the level that the Wards had been for _years_ , honed her skills to absolute perfection, and carried around one of the most lethal weapons Sophia had ever seen…

Scatter had power, and she was willing to use it. Not enough to march into Piggy's office and demand what she wanted - nobody short of Scion, or maybe a Triumvirate member could browbeat the entire Protectorate like that, which was why Sophia had given in to getting stuck on this team in the first place - but enough to go behind her back without worrying about the consequences.

"Nice work, for both of you. Shadow Stalker, I like this new tactic, but make sure you don't use it against anybody who can't take it. That would kill just about anyone else. Aegis, you're getting faster and meaner, but you've got to work on dodging attacks as well. One of these days, you're gonna encounter something you can't just tank." She paused for a second, looking up into the air as Aegis struggled to... extricate himself from the branches and sighed. "It's gonna be a nightmare to get all that stuff out of your chest. Are you alright up there?"

Sophia began walking back toward the camp as Scatter moved upward and started tearing at the branches. Aegis would be fine, she'd seen him take worse. More than that, she'd finally found something that would be effective against heavier targets. One more rung up the ladder.

* * *

 **January 10th, 2011**

" _Sophia Hess, please report to the principal's office."_

Sophia stood from her desk. It was the first Monday back after winter break - why was she getting called in already? Had somebody actually been dumb enough to snitch on that prank this morning? Whatever. Worst case scenario, she could get Emma and Madison to back her up again. Maybe Emma would finally decide to switch to a different target for once - Sophia really didn't understand the girl's obsession, and she doubted that they'd find a way to top this, at any rate.

Once she got to the office, she realized what was happening. The woman at the door wasn't in uniform, but that was the furthest thing from odd. Laura Hopsey, her... _handler_ with the PRT.

"Sophia, there's some unfortunate news. Your mother should probably tell you in person," Laura said. It was all useless code, designed to sound innocuous to the surrounding faculty, who all knew who she was anyway, and any students who happened by, who were all too dumb or too high to realize what they were talking about even if they hadn't been bothering to hide it. That didn't even start on the code's actual meaning. Why were they hauling her out of school for a security briefing? Not that she was complaining about skipping the last couple of classes of school, but this was one of a handful of things that might actually be worse.

"Right," Sophia responded. No point in fighting it. She'd done that enough to be dangerous lately. "You're driving me?"

"Yes. If you'll come with me?"

The ride was fast and blissfully silent - Hopsey wasn't interested in talking, and neither was Sophia. Hopsey drove as quickly as she could without breaking the letter of the law. They pulled into the PHQ's garage, and Sophia simply walked in, skipping past all the identity procedures thanks to the method of entry. They really weren't messing around here.

Once inside, she was directed to the Wards' briefing room in the basement, where she found the rest of the team seated around a pair of plastic fold-up tables. Deputy Renick was there as well, sitting at the head with the Wards gathered around the sides. Sophia neglected to take the lone empty chair to his right, instead dropping heavily into a recliner in a corner of the room.

"Shadow Stalker. Nice of you to join us," Renick opened. "Now that everybody's here, we can start. The Protectorate is receiving a similar briefing as we speak, but we felt as though this was serious enough to warrant briefing the groups separately."

In other words, they wanted to water it down to preserve the Ward's delicate sensibilities. Sophia looked at the people sitting around the table and was a little surprised to see that everyone else there looked just as annoyed as she did.

Renick continued, "As you all know, in the aftermath of the Empire's attack on the city, things have been growing more unstable. The Protectorate has been dispatched several times to deal with any appearances, and the surrounding gangs have begun pressing them as well."

Sophia hadn't been keeping track of it lately, but she wasn't surprised. That was usually what happened when a smaller gang collapsed, so seeing it in action on a larger scale wasn't unusual. The real question was what it meant for her.

"There haven't been any cape casualties yet, but a lot of gang members have been injured and a handful killed. Lung has made several pushes into Downtown, with Coil squeezing them from the other side and a handful of smaller groups or individuals making plays and robbing hideouts as well. The Empire isn't gone yet, but I suspect that they won't be lasting much longer, and their collapse is making a power vacuum."

All entirely too obvious. Sophia spoke up, leaving the 'get to the point' implied. "Who are we going to have to fight?"

Renick paused at that, but only for a second. He was used to her by now. "We aren't sure yet. Sophia, we'll be giving you half-days at school as everyone else has at Arcadia for the foreseeable future. The rest of you will be on-call for as much of the day as we can afford to give you, picking up the slack the Protectorate will be generating fighting the big threats. If… Trainwreck, or Carapacitor, or the Undersiders decide to make another play, we'll need you in place to intercept and bring them in."

Of course. The Wards weren't being put into the real fight. They'd be the sidekicks again, fighting the small-timers until the Protectorate fought the real fight. On the other hand… the Wards were a lot stronger now, even with less than three weeks of practice. Maybe not on Scatter's level, but stronger. This might be a chance for all of them to show what they could really do.

Plus, he'd mentioned the Undersiders. She might just get a chance to beat Grue into the pavement for his troubles. "I'll take the first shift," Sophia said.

The entire room looked to her in various degrees of shock and surprise.

* * *

 **January 12th, 2011**

Scatter rode with them to the woods this time. She'd been at the front of the van with her back to the driver's cab, hidden under the window so she was out of their line of sight, having entered with her power a few minutes after they'd left the building. She'd been pretty quiet for the first quarter-hour or so, just giving the expected greetings before settling into silence with her eyes closed and occasional splashes of red forcefield or roses flickering across her body. Sophia had no doubt that she could have run ahead and beaten them there by a lot if she'd wanted, so what was she doing here?

Even once she'd finally started talking, Sophia hadn't gotten many answers. "Alright, guys, listen up. Like you heard a couple of days ago, things are about to get crazy. We might not have much more training time left before you end up having to fight for real, so we're going to have one last spar for tonight." Just one spar? What was she planning? "You've all improved a lot over the last few weeks. Some of you have passed what I would have guessed possible for someone without Aura to manage, and all of you have managed some really impressive progress."

Scatter smiled, and Sophia tensed. She was used to the smiles - Scatter did it a lot, Sophia assumed it was so that people underestimated her - but this one was different.

Scatter continued, "That's why I'm only giving you all thirty second's head start." The doors opened, and Sophia didn't waste a second in phasing through the wall behind her. The team could fend for themselves, she wasn't sticking around any longer than she needed to.

It was a repeat of the first training session they'd had, back when the Wards had all stormed out of the room in a huff. Sophia had actually agreed with them at first - why let Scatter walk all over her if she wasn't getting anything out of it? She'd been proven wrong about that, of course, but that didn't change the truth now. Improved or not, the Wards didn't stand a chance in hell, so Sophia ran. If it had been a real fight, it was better to live to fight another day than die protecting people who would die anyway.

She rolled with the landing, jumping upward and forward when she came to her feet and launching herself off the van roof. Her teammates were already out of the van, faster than she'd expected and mostly bunched up but running in a different direction. Good enough for her, maybe Scatter would go after them first.

After the past few weeks, she knew these woods like the back of her hand. She knew exactly where to go - a particularly thick copse of trees she'd spotted days before but hadn't needed to use yet.

Counting seconds wasn't easy when adrenaline was running high, so Sophia didn't bother. She just listened and gathered what information she could. She quieted her breathing, launched forward off a tree she'd just phased through, rephased and became utterly silent. Sound passed through her with everything else in this state, but she'd only recently begun to realize that she could use the sensations that the moving air carried with it to listen.

A handful of seconds after she shifted, just as she was about to hit the ground, Sophia felt the air _shudder_ around her. She reformed just in time to catch the very end of the airhorn blast coming from behind her and caught a flash of motion shooting off into the sky directly over the van before shooting off in a direction that would take her toward the far side of the other group. It was well past dark out, and Scatter could have been a lot stealthier in terms of what direction she was going. She was still holding back, Sophia realized.

On the plus side, it seemed like her trick had worked. Sophia had left the van through it's left wall, then run toward the woods on its right in an attempt to draw Scatter in the wrong direction, and the direction Scatter had moved would split the difference between where the other group was and where Scatter thought Sophia was. A red blur appeared in the corner of Sophia's eye, and she rephased just in time for a wooden staff to pass through her at speeds almost too fast to register.

She landed and jumped again. Scatter spun with the miss and brought her improvised weapon down quickly enough that Sophia felt the impact as she began to phase, the physical pain muted by the transition to her shadow state. Spinning in midair and flying backward, Sophia fired a pair of arrows, knowing that she wouldn't have the chance to load anymore, and watched Scatter sidestep one and backhand the other out of the air without slowing down.

Scatter kept spinning, jumping up, teleporting to the ground behind her, attacking from every possible angle and direction the entire time, never stopping for even a second and kept her staff in such a constant and unpredictable motion that it was impossible to block or really dodge anything. Sophia didn't have time to think. If she dephased, Scatter would take advantage. If she stopped moving, Scatter would find a way-

Scatter swung the staff through Sophia's chest with one hand, her other hand raised behind it. Sophia caught a glimpse of yellow light growing in intensity between the woman's fingers. Her eyes widened, but she didn't have time to react before a bolt of lightning no more than a pencil's width in diameter crackled through the space she was standing in. Somewhere idly in the back of Sophia's mind, she recognized that it really wasn't even enough lightning to do more than sting someone normal, but that thought was quickly banished as the bolt cut through her in a line that burned like fire. Sophia collapsed to the ground with her shadow state canceled and groaned slowly.

"Shadow Stalker, you just put up a decent fight." Sophia would have laughed if she'd had the breath. She hadn't lasted more than five seconds. Was Scatter taunting her now? Sophia knew she wasn't as 'nice' as she claimed to be. "Do you know why I went for you first?"

Sophia didn't, actually. She guessed anyway, "So I wouldn't get a chance to hide?"

Scatter sighed and shook her head. "Because you were alone. I know we've been focusing on one-on-one fighting, but you've got to improve on teamwork as well. It's better to fight protecting your team to try and take down whatever the threat is together than to run off on your own to get taken out later."

Sophia didn't have a chance to respond, even if she'd known what to say. Scatter vanished again, and a red cloud shot in the direction of the other group. That had actually sounded serious. Surely it wasn't, right? She'd seen through Sophia's trick in an instant, taken her down in seconds. And yet she was still so wrong about everything. How did someone that naive about the world get so strong without getting taken down a few notches?

No, it was a trick. It had to be. Either she was trying to fool everybody around her, or she was fooling herself. Not that it really mattered. Scatter had the right to talk about what she saw fit. If she wanted to uphold this teamwork delusion, then that was her decision. Sophia would just have to stay out of the line of fire.

She grinned. One day, she'd get to that level. With Scatter helping her along, Sophia was sure it was possible. She'd just have to keep climbing, one rung at a time.

* * *

 **Whew. Sorry about the delay on this one. Motivation ran out for a bit in the middle there, but I think I'm back in full swing now.**

 **I feel like people might have problems with this one. I was trying to avoid fanon's idea of Sophia, and I think I pulled her off pretty well. She slots people into her worldview, bending their motivations in her head to match it better; it's what she's doing to Ruby here. Please refrain from taking anything the psychopath says as gospel truth.**

 **I haven't divided up a chapter like this in a while. It actually feels a little weird now, but it had to be done to move the timeline along. Worm may have run through twenty-two arcs in three months, but this is going to be a tad more spread out. We're getting closer to where canon picked up (for reference, Gestation 1.1 would take place on April 8th), though things are obviously going to be rather different this time around.**

 **I don't normally reply to anonymous reviews, but I felt the need to comment on one thing that came up recently since I suspect others are wondering about the same thing - Challenger is a canon character. We knew literally nothing about them aside from their name and affiliation with the Brockton Protectorate until a recent Ward flashback interlude, so I took a lot of liberties with the character that have now been proven incorrect (for one thing, canon's Challenger was a woman), but he's not totally my own creation.**

 **I think that's everything I've got to say this time. Next chapter coming sooner, I hope. As always, thanks for reading and reviewing, and I'll see you next time!**


	24. Bud 3-r

**Bud 3-r**

" _Weiss!"_

"Yang!" Weiss ran down the ramp in a way she never would have dared growing up and met her teammate in a hug that saw her getting picked up and spun around. "It's been too long."

"Yeah. I just wish this was under better circumstances," Yang responded, her face falling.

Weiss compulsively straightened her combat uniform once she was back on the ground before meeting Yang's eyes. "Don't worry. We'll find her, and once we do, we'll-"

"Kick my ex-wife's feathered tail?" A new voice emerged from a few yards away. Walking toward the pair was a tall, blond man with his upper arms heavily tattooed and on full display and a deep frown on his face. "Because that's certainly my plan. Ms. Schnee, it's good to see you again."

Weiss hadn't seen Taiyang since the aftermath of Salem's death, and she didn't believe she'd ever had a real conversation with the man. She supposed he was just that friendly, obvious emotions aside. "Mr. Xiao Long, it'll be good to have another Huntsman of your caliber with us. I don't suppose you have any idea where Raven is?"

"I have a few. We can discuss on the ship though. We should get moving." He began walking toward the _Assumed Mantle_ , leaving Weiss and Yang to exchange glances and hurry after him.

"We'll need to stop in Vale to refuel. Um, Isn't your partner coming?"

"Qrow will show up at some point. Unless one of you actually managed to contact him?" Yang shook her head, and he continued, "Then he's out hiding somewhere. The man is one of the best spies on the planet, it's safe to assume that he knows what's happening, or at least will soon. For now, let's get to Mistral and pick up the others."

Yang shot Weiss a glance, communicating a great deal of worry with just the one look. Weiss understood the issue immediately. Even her brief interactions with Yang's father had given her the impression of a very different man than the one who was currently stomping toward her personal airship. Had Ruby's disappearance affected him this badly? They had reason to suspect she was still alive, and she wasn't exactly helpless.

She took a breath. He was Ruby's father, she had to remember that. Her own paternal experiences aside, Tai cared deeply for his daughters. Weiss gave Yang a light touch on the arm that could have seemed accidental coming from anyone else and indicated the cockpit with an imperceptible tilt of her head. The message would have been invisible to anyone else, but absolutely clear to her teammates. _Meet me up there, once he's settled?_

Yang gave a small nod and a tight smile before popping the joint in her pinky finger. Fifth finger, five minutes. Perfect, that would be just enough time to get moving toward Vale's docks.

Weiss entered _Assumed Mantle's_ entry hallway and walked to the very front of the craft, where a pilot's chair and console sat facing a featureless, blank wall. As soon as she sat down, placed Myrternaster into a custom sheath built into the chair and placed her hands on the armrests, the floor around her began sliding up and forward, bringing her to just above and behind the ship's nose. Holographic and hard-light displays flickered to life around her, and she was treated to an absolutely gorgeous view of the city of Vale.

She was reminded of the many times that team RWBY had come down to Beacon's airship docks for the view, back before the Fall of Beacon. Now that she thought about it, the pad she had landed on was their preferred spot to visit. The city itself had changed dramatically since the last time she'd seen it from this angle - the day after the team's first mission to Mountain Glenn, more than six years ago. The skyline had shifted more toward the west, as buildings brought down during the Fall were rebuilt further away from Beacon in response to the growing numbers of Grimm swelling within the school, and new buildings had begun to crop up outside the city's ancient walls.

With the command chair in place, Weiss gripped a pair of hardlight orbs representing the thrusters on each wing and twisted them upward, bringing the ship into the air and rotating toward the south. The most advanced pilot assistance program on the planet guided the process, making it as smooth as Vacuan silk and allowing the ship to handle like a dream no matter what the pilot forced it to do. The orbs adapted to her hands, ergonomically matching her exact grip as other controls floated to where she'd programmed them to be while in flight mode. Weiss flicked one finger toward a control that had shifted position to be close to her hand, retracting the exit ramp and closing the door, then pushed forward with both hands to send the ship off at speeds that would have been blisteringly fast from the outside.

Four minutes later, the ship had landed near the city's southeastern corner, at an SDC refueling station that was only too happy to load the boss' ship full of every kind of Dust they had available. Wind and Gravity for the engines, Fire and Lightning for the weapons. She imagined some weird looks at her request for some of the more esoteric Dust types; Hardlight Dust shields weren't unheard of, but few ships had a use for the specialized Foliage or Steam types she was requesting. She'd let them wonder; this couldn't be an exciting post to be stationed at, maybe the mystery would do them some good.

Yang came down from the passenger section just as the refueling process began. Weiss had lowered the command chair again and was idly monitoring the station team's progress from a monitor that had followed her down from upstairs before spinning around to hug her teammate again.

"Nice ship," Yang said. "We might have to double up on rooms, but I'll take that for the amenities."

Weiss smiled. Not that she was one to brag, but… ah, who was she kidding? "It's also one of the fastest ships on the planet, not to mention that once we're done here, it'll be loaded up with enough Dust to destroy a small island, rebuild it from the ashes, then destroy it again."

Yang whistled appreciatively. "And here I was, expecting to be puttering around in a Bullhead. How fast can this thing get to Mistral?"

"Two hours, in theory. In reality, we'll have to go a little slower if we don't need to refuel again. This thing eats through as much Dust as a battleship at top speed."

"Hah, I don't know why I expected anything else." Yang hesitated for a second, glancing back toward the ship's aft.

"How is he doing? I don't know him that well, but…"

"It's... not great. I've never seen him like this before, even after Summer died. He was more depressed than angry back then."

Yang took a breath like she was going to keep talking, but released it without saying anything. She looked lost, like she didn't know what she was doing. Taiyang was more obvious about it, but Yang looked almost as disturbed. She hadn't looked anything like that on the call the day before.

This wasn't Wess' area of expertise, exactly. She'd certainly had family issues, but they were caused by totally different things. Very few of her family members would have batted an eye if she went missing as Ruby had. Even the ones who did would never have let anyone see it. She'd never been much of a shoulder to cry on, but she was the only one here, now. "If it's not too much to ask… do you have any ideas as to why?"

Yang herself was staying strong, trying to keep emotions down. Maybe not the healthiest thing to be doing, but Weiss certainly got the feeling. It was what she needed, then. "He lost Raven, and it hurt him, but he recovered. He lost Summer, and that hurt more. Now that Ruby's gone… It's basically just me, and I'm not sure I'm capable of supporting him alone."

"You won't have to, Yang. We're going to find her, we're going to bring her down, and we're going to get Ruby back. Focus on that, and keep things as positive as you can. Raven can't hide forever."

Yang was visibly pulling herself together, or at least trying to look like she was. Weiss knew from experience that the rest would come in time. Yang would bury her anger, keep it hidden until it was gone… or she could channel it into her Semblance. Whichever came first.

"Dad's going to sleep, he was up all night," Yang said. "I... think I'll do the same until we get there. You'll wake me if there's trouble, right?"

"Absolutely," Weiss responded, knowing that there wouldn't be. There wasn't a Grimm alive that could keep up with a ship like this. "I'll tell the ship to alert you once we're over the Mistrali sea."

Yang nodded, forced a smile, and moved back toward the passenger area. As long as she kept things positive, she'd be just fine. Weiss returned to her seat and requested permission to disembark.

* * *

Mount Haven stood ahead of them, riddled with bridges and tunnels, with ships of every shape and size taking off and landing from a dozen different landing pads and wispy clouds floating past the higher levels, the mountain itself scoring through them as one of a handful tall enough to reach up and touch them. Weiss had seen Haven before from the ground, but never from this altitude. Her only time entering the city of Mistral before now was via one of Raven's portals, and her exit was via train. Mistral had been dangerous, both in general thanks to its criminal element, now rapidly dwindling with the decreasing demand for Huntsmen, and later thanks to its proximity to Menagerie and the White Fang.

Weiss brought the ship in for a landing, extending the struts with a flick of one finger and opening the bay door with a second, gently dropping the ship to the pad with nary a shudder. She stood, disconnecting her rapier from its slot and strapping it back to her side as her command chair sank back to the lower level.

Yang was waiting in the central hallway, looking a lot more put-together than she had been previously. If she hadn't been there two hours previously, Weiss would never have known she was upset. "Blake contacted me a minute ago; she saw our flight coming in. She's on her way, and she's bringing Juniper with her. She must have found them just about as soon as she got here. Still no word from Qrow though."

"You sure about that, Firecracker?"

Yang whirled around, eyes widening, and Weiss' hand was on her rapier before she recognized that she was even moving it. When a black-hooded figure dropped from somewhere up above their view out the back of the ship, she forced her hand off the pommel. Unfortunately, she knew that this guy wasn't a threat.

"Uncle Qrow!" Yang blurred down the ramp and slammed into the older man at top speed. That the pair of them didn't go sprawling off the edge of the platform was a testament to a strength that wasn't betrayed by his thin frame or greying hair. "How'd you get here so fast?"

"Oh, I was in the area," Qrow chuckled. "Tracking down a couple of Huntsmen that went rogue, co-opted a local gang and started absorbing the competition."

He had Weiss' attention now. "I've heard about that happening sometimes lately. It hasn't been going well for anybody involved. Is it going to cause any issues if you drop the case? I could find someone to-"

"Not to worry, Ice Queen, you won't be getting rid of me that easily. I got their location yesterday, tipped off Haven. I give it twelve hours before they're rotting in a jail cell thanks to some... plucky band of student misfits. This is more important."

Bah. She wasn't trying to get rid of him, and he knew it. She wouldn't rise to his game, though. She'd learned her lesson about that the first time she'd met him. "Of course. Taiyang is upstairs, I assume you'll want to meet with him?"

That put him off his footing. "Ah… maybe in a bit. We'll be here for a while, right? Waiting for the rest of Ranger?"

Yang punched him in the arm. "They're called Juniper, Qrow. Don't tell me you're going senile already."

"And they'll be here momentarily. We'll be leaving again in fifteen minutes tops, though we'll need to stop and refuel again on the way in… Wind Pass, I believe," Weiss input. "After that… I'm not sure where we're going, to be quite honest. Taiyang said he had a few ideas, I assume you do as well?"

Qrow drew in a breath. "I do, but there's something we need to keep in mind. You two know how her Semblance works, right? You've used it before." They both nodded. "What you might not know is that she can track her markers. It lets her know where she'll be going whenever she opens a portal, and it's how she kept tabs on you for as long as she did."

Yang's eyes widened, and she cursed under her breath. It didn't take Weiss long to reach the same conclusion. "Which means that she's going to see three of her markers in one place, less than a week after she took Ruby. She knows we're coming, and she'll know wherever we're going well in advance. Is there any way to break the markers? Cut your connection?"

"If there is, we never found it. As far as we can tell, they're permanent. On the plus side, the more of these markers we can gather in one place, the fewer options she'll have. I don't know how many she's created since we last ran into her, but it couldn't be many."

Yang spoke up, "It might not be that simple. She beat Ruby, apparently bad enough that Ruby couldn't get away. She might be using the Relic, and if she is then that opens up a lot of options for her. Do we have any idea what that might do to a Semblance like hers?

"Speaking from personal experience," said Weiss, "It would be… significant. If she's using that thing, and she's still able to track us with her Semblance… I'm not sure we could do anything to track her, let alone stop her."

Footsteps echoed from behind Qrow, and he turned out of the way to reveal four figures walking toward the ship. All four were walking quietly, which was more of a surprise for some of them than others. Blake and Jaune were in front, with Ren and Nora behind them.

"Blake!" Yang ran forward first, Weiss close behind her. The three of them met in a group hug that wasn't nearly as awkward as it probably should have been with three participants and four witnesses. "I guess you heard all of that?"

"I did, but I also have an idea as to where she might be." If she didn't have the group's attention before, she definitely did now. Team JNPR didn't look surprised, thankfully. "I talked to some… acquaintances of mine in Menagerie before we left, and I actually heard back from them last night. We've got some fuzzy surveillance footage that looks like her walking into Flourish from the outer wall. It could hypothetically just be somebody that looks similar, but…"

"As hiding places go, the ex-Grimmlands are a pretty good one," Jaune continued. "That place is a wild frontier, it's as close to lawless as anywhere else on Remnant."

"You've been there? I'm a little jealous," Yang said.

"Just once, and that was plenty enough for me. It reminded me of those settlements in the extreme north of Vale, that we moved through on our way to Relicta last year."

"Nevermind. No longer jealous."

"So that's our first destination? Right into the heart of Salem's former territory?" Sounds lovely, Weiss didn't say. Flourish was the first settlement on the continent of Relicta in decades. It apparently had aspirations of becoming a new Kingdom, but from what Weiss had heard it had a long way to go before it reached that status. Anybody who didn't want to tangle with the increasing number of Huntsmen patrolling the streets in the Kingdoms wound up running there.

"Certainly sounds like it," Qrow said. "It won't be my first time there either, so you'll have a guide if you need one."

"Just our luck!" Nora called out. "The sooner we get going, the sooner we can get there!"

"Alright then. Weiss, are we ready to head out?"

"Flourish is almost exactly on the opposite side of the planet. We'll need to refuel… again, and probably once more on Vytal, but we can load up now. Everyone, get onboard, bunks are one level up and the kitchen is one level above that. Be sure you're ready. We should arrive in Flourish by this time tomorrow, and I wouldn't be surprised if we run into some action while we're there."

* * *

 **Conceal, don't feel, don't let it show. Huntresses just have the _best_ coping strategies, don't they? /s**

 **I'm sorry this took so long. Can't even point to a lack of motivation or anything, I just got distracted. I'm gonna try to get back into my rhythm in the near future.**

 **I think that's about all I've got this time, though. As always, thank you for reading, criticism is welcome, and I'll see you next time!**


End file.
